PR 6003 
.E4 W6 


1896 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



000C!32Ej5 L tfll 












































The Works of Max Beerbohm 









The Works of 
Max Beerbohm 



Charles Scribner’s Sons 
New York & 1896 


. £ 4 ~ Y/ 

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Copyright, 1896, by 
Charles Scribner’s Sons 

11.~ s oko3 z 


TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANT 






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* 


Contents 


/. 

Dandies and Dandies . 

PAGE 

; 

II. 

A Good Prince 

3 1 

///. 

1880 . 

• 39 

IV. 

King George the Fourth . 

59 

V. 

The Pervasion of Rouge 

. IOI 

VI. 

Poor Romeo! .... 

129 

VII. 

Diminuendo .... 

. 151 











Dandies and Dandies 








Dandies and Dandies 


How very delightful Grego’s drawings are ! For 
all their mad perspective and crude color, they 
have indeed the sentiment of style, and they 
reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other 
record, the spirit of Mr. Brummell’s day. Grego 
guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all the mys¬ 
teries of that other world. He shows me those 
stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, 
drinking Burgundy in the Cafe des Mi lies Colonnes 
or riding through the village of Newmarket upon 
their fat cobs or gambling at Crockford’s. Grego’s 
Green Room of the Opera House always delights 
me. The formal way in which Mdlle. Mercandotti 
is standing upon one leg for the pleasure of Lord 
Fife and Mr. Ball Hughes; the grave regard di¬ 
rected by Lord Petersham towards that pretty little 
maid-a-mischief who is risking her rouge beneath 
the chandelier; the unbridled decorum of Mdlle. 


3 


Dandies and Dandies 


Hullin, and the decorous debauchery of Prince 
Esterhazy in the distance, make altogether a quite 
enchanting picture. But, of the whole series, the 
most illuminative picture is certainly the Ball at 
Alrnack's. In the foreground stand two little 
figures, beneath whom, on the nether margin, are 
inscribed those splendid words, “ Beau Brummell 
in Deep Conversation with the Duchess of Rut¬ 
land .” The Duchess is a girl in pink, with a 
great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the 
Beau tres degage , his head averse, his chin most 
supercilious upon his stock, one foot advanced, 
the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly in 
his waistcoat; in fact, the very deuce of a pose. 

In this, as in all known images of the Beau, we 
are struck by the utter simplicity of his attire. 
The “countless rings” affected by D’Orsay, the 
many little golden chains, “every one of them 
slighter than a cobweb,” that Disraeli loved to 
insinuate from one pocket to another of his vest, 
would have seemed vulgar to Mr. Brummell. For 
is it not to his fine scorn of accessories that we 
may trace that first aim of modern dandyism, the 
production of the supreme effect through means 
the least extravagant ? In certain congruities of 


4 



Dandies and Dandies 


dark cloth, in the rigid perfection of his linen, in 
the symmetry of his glove with his hand, lay the 
secret of Mr. Brummell’s miracles. He was ever 
most economical, most scrupulous of means. Treat¬ 
ment was everything with him. Even foolish 
Grace and foolish Philip Wharton, in their book 
about the beaux and wits of this period, speak of 
his dressing-room as “a studio in which he daily 
composed that elaborate portrait of himself which 
was to be exhibited for a few hours in the club- 
rooms of the town.” Mr. Brummell was, indeed, 
in the utmost sense of the word, an artist. No 
poet, nor cook, nor sculptor, ever bore that title 
more worthily than he. 

And really, outside his art, Mr. Brummell had 
a personality of almost Balzacian insignificance. 
There have been dandies, like D’Orsay, who were 
nearly painters; painters, like Mr. Whistler, who 
wished to be dandies; dandies, like Disraeli, who 
afterwards followed some less arduous calling. I 
fancy Mr. Brummell was a dandy, nothing but a 
dandy, from his cradle to that fearful day when he 
lost his figure and had to flee the country, even to 
that distant day when he died, a broken exile, in 
the arms of two religieuses. At Eton, no boy was 
5 


Dandies and Dandies 


so successful as he in avoiding that strict alterna¬ 
tive of study and athletics which we force upon 
our youth. He once terrified a master, named 
Parker, by asserting that he thought cricket 
“foolish.” Another time, after listening to a 
reprimand from the head-master, he twitted that 
learned man with the asymmetry of his neckcloth. 
Even in Oriel he could see little charm, and was 
glad to leave it, at the end of his first year, for a 
commission in the Tenth Hussars. Crack though 
the regiment was—indeed, all the commissions 
were granted by the Regent himself—young Mr. 
Brummell could not bear to see all his brother- 
officers in clothes exactly like his own; was quite 
as deeply annoyed as would be some god, suddenly 
entering a restaurant of many mirrors. One day, 
he rode upon parade in a pale blue tunic, with 
silver epaulettes. The Colonel, apologizing for 
the narrow system which compelled him to so 
painful a duty, asked him to leave the parade. 
The Beau saluted, trotted back to quarters and, 
that afternoon, sent in his papers. Henceforth he 
lived freely as a fop, in his maturity, should. 

His debut in the town was brilliant and delight¬ 
ful. Tales of his elegance had won for him there 
6 



Dandies and Dandies 


a precedent fame. He was reputed rich. It was 
known that the Regent desired his acquaintance. 
And thus, Fortune speeding the wheels of his cab¬ 
riolet and Fashion running to meet him with 
smiles and roses in St. James’s, he might well, had 
he been worldly or a weakling, have yielded his 
soul to the polite follies. But he passed them by. 
Once he was settled in his suite, he never really 
strayed from his toilet-table, save for a few brief 
hours. Thrice every day of the year did he dress, 
and three hours were the average of his every 
toilet, and other hours were spent in council with 
the cutter of his coats or with the custodian of his 
wardrobe. A single, devoted life ! To White’s, 
to routs, to races, he went, it is true, not reluct¬ 
antly. He was known to have played battledore 
and shuttlecock in a moonlit garden with Mr. 
Previte and some other gentlemen. His elope¬ 
ment with a young Countess from a ball at Lady 
Jersey’s was quite notorious. It was even whis¬ 
pered that he once, in the company of some friends, 
made as though he would wrench the knocker off 
the door of some shop. But these things he did, 
not, most certainly, for any exuberant love of life. 
Rather did he regard them as healthful exercise of 
7 


Dandies and Dandies 


the body, and a charm against that dreaded cor¬ 
pulency which, in the end, caused his downfall. 
Some recreation from his work even the most 
strenuous artist must have; and Mr. Brummell 
naturally sought his in that exalted sphere whose 
modish elegance accorded best with his tempera¬ 
ment, the sphere of le plus beau monde. General 
Bucknall used to growl, from the window of the 
Guards’ Club, that such a fellow was only fit to as¬ 
sociate with tailors. But that was an old soldier’s 
fallacy. The proper associates of an artist are they 
who practise his own art rather than they who— 
however honorably—do but cater for its practice. 
For the rest, I am sure that Mr. Brummell was no 
lackey, as they have suggested. He wished merely 
to be seen by those who were best qualified to ap¬ 
preciate the splendor of his achievements. Shall 
not the painter show his work in galleries, the 
poet flit down Paternoster Row ? Of rank, for its 
own sake, Mr. Brummell had no love. He pat¬ 
ronized all his patrons. Even to the Regent his 
attitude was always that of a master in an art to 
one who is sincerely willing and anxious to learn 
from him. 

Indeed, English society is always ruled by a 
8 



Dandies and Dandies 


dandy, and the more absolutely ruled the greater 
that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfect flower 
of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striv¬ 
ing to realize in its own rather incoherent way. 
But there is no reason why dandyism should be 
confused, as it has been by nearly all writers, with 
mere social life. Its contact with social life is, 
indeed, but one of the accidents of an art. Its 
influence, like the scent of a flower, is diffused 
unconsciously. It has its own aims and laws, and 
knows none other. And the only person who 
ever fully acknowledged this truth in aesthetics is, 
of all persons most unlikely, the author of Sartor 
Resartus. That any one who dressed so very 
badly as did Thomas Carlyle should have tried to 
construct a philosophy of clothes has always seemed 
to me one of the most pathetic things in literature. 
He in the Temple of Vestments ! Why sought he 
to intrude, another Clodius, upon those mysteries 
and light his pipe from those ardent censers? 
What were his hobnails that they should mar the 
pavement of that delicate Temple? Yet, for that 
he betrayed one secret rightly heard there, will 
I pardon his sacrilege. “ A dandy,” he cried 
through the mask of Teufelsdrock, “is a clothes- 


9 


Dandies and Dandies 


wearing man, a man whose trade, office, and ex¬ 
istence consists in the wearing of clothes. Every 
faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is 
heroically consecrated to this one object, the wear¬ 
ing of clothes wisely and well.” Those are true 
words. They are, perhaps, the only true words 
in Sartor Resartus. And I speak with some au¬ 
thority. For I found the key to that empty book, 
long ago, in the lock of the author’s empty ward¬ 
robe. His hat, that is still preserved in Chelsea, 
formed an important clue. 

But (behold !) as we repeat the true words of 
Teufelsdrock, there comes Monsieur Barbey D’Au- 
revilly, that gentle moqueur , drawling, with a 
wave of his hand, “Les esprits qui ne voient les 
choses que par leur plus petit cote , ont imagine que 
le Dandysme etait surtout Part de la mise , une 
heureuse et audacieuse dictature en fait de toilette et 
d ’ elegance exterieure. Tres-certainement c est cela 
aussi, mais c' est bien davantage. Le Dandysme est 
toute une maniere d'etre et Von ri est pas que par 
la cote materiellement visible. C'est une maniere 
d'etre entierement composee de nuances , comme il 
arrive toujours dans les societes tres-vieilles et tres- 
civilisees. ” It is a pleasure to argue with so suave 
io 


Dandies and Dandies 


a subtlist, and we say to him that this comprehen¬ 
sive definition does not please us. We say we 
think he errs. 

Not that Monsieur’s analysis of the dandiacal 
mind is worthless by any means. Nor, when he 
declares that George Brummell was the supreme 
king of the dandies and fut le dandysme meme, can 
I but piously lay one hand upon the brim of my 
hat, the other upon my heart. But it is as an artist, 
and for his supremacy in the art of costume, and 
for all he did to gain the recognition of costume 
as in itself an art, and for that superb taste and 
subtle simplicity of mode whereby he was able to 
expel, at length, the Byzantine spirit of exuber¬ 
ance which had possessed St. James’s and where¬ 
fore he is justly called the Father of Modern Cos¬ 
tume, that I do most deeply revere him. It is not 
a little strange that Monsieur D’Aurevilly, the 
biographer who, in many ways, does seem most 
perfectly to have understood Mr. Brummell, should 
belittle to a mere phase that which was indeed the 
very core of his existence. To analyze the tem¬ 
perament of a great artist and then to declare 
that his art was but a part—a little part—of his 
temperament, is a foolish proceeding. It is as 


Dandies and Dandies 


though a man should say that he finds, on analysis, 
that gunpowder is composed of potassium chloride 
(let me say), nitrate and power of explosion. 
Dandyism is ever the outcome of a carefully culti¬ 
vated temperament, not part of the temperament 
itself. That maniere d’etre, entierement composee 
de nuances , was not more, as the writer seems to 
have supposed, than attributory to Mr. Brummell’s 
art. Nor is it even peculiar to dandies. All deli¬ 
cate spirits, to whatever art they turn, even if they 
turn to no art, assume an oblique attitude towards 
life. Of all dandies, Mr. Brummell did most 
steadfastly maintain this attitude. Like the sin¬ 
gle-minded artist that he was, he turned full and 
square towards his art and looked life straight in 
the face out of the corners of his eyes. 

It is not hard to see how, in the effort to give 
Mr. Brummell his due place in history, Monsieur 
D’Aurevilly came to grief. It is but strange that 
he should have fallen into a rather obvious trap. 
Surely he should have perceived that, so long as 
Civilization compels her children to wear clothes, 
the thoughtless multitude will never acknowledge 
dandyism to be an art. If considerations of 
modesty or hygiene compelled every one to stain 


Dandies and Dandies 


canvas or chip marble every morning, painting 
and sculpture would in like manner be despised. 
Now, as these considerations do compel every one 
to envelop himself in things made of cloth and 
linen, this common duty is confounded with that 
fair procedure, elaborate of many thoughts, in 
whose accord the fop accomplishes his toilet, each 
morning afresh, Aurora speeding on to gild his 
mirror. Not until nudity be popular will the art 
of costume be really acknowledged. Nor even then 
will it be approved. Communities are ever jealous 
(quite naturally) of the artist who works for his 
own pleasure, not for theirs—more jealous by far 
of him whose energy is spent only upon the glori¬ 
fication of himself alone. Carlyle speaks of dan¬ 
dyism as a survival of “the primeval supersti¬ 
tion, self-worship.” “La vanite are almost the 
first words of Monsieur D’Aurevilly, “ c' est un 
sentiment contre lequel tout le monde est impitoy- 
abled ’ Few remember that the dandy’s vanity is 
far different from the crude conceit of the merely 
handsome man. Dandyism is, after all, one of 
the decorative arts. A fine ground to work upon 
is its first postulate. And the dandy cares for his 
physical endowments, only in so far as they are 


13 


Dandies and Dandies 


susceptible of fine results. They are just so much 
to him as to the decorative artist is inilluminate 
parchment, the form of a white vase or the surface 
of a wall where frescoes shall be. 

Consider the words of Count D’Orsay, spoken 
on the eve of some duel, 4 ‘We are not fairly 
matched. If I were to wound him in the face it 
would not matter ; but if he were to wound me, 
ce serait vraiment do?nmage / ’ * There we have a 
pure example of a dandy’s peculiar vanity—“It 
would be a real pity ! ” They say that D’Orsay 
killed his man—no matter whom—in this duel. 
He never should have gone out. Beau Brummell 
never risked his dandyhood in these mean en¬ 
counters. But D’Orsay was a wayward, excessive 
creature, too fond of life and other follies to 
achieve real greatness. The power of his prede¬ 
cessor, the Father of Modern Costume, is over us 
yet. All that is left of D’Orsay’s art is a waist¬ 
coat and a handful of rings—vain relics of no 
more value for us than the fiddle of Paganini or 
the mask of Menischus ! I think that in Carolo’s 
painting of him, we can see the strength, that was 
the weakness, of le jeune Cupidon. His fingers 
are closed upon his cane as upon a sword. There 


14 


Dandies and Dandies 


is mockery in the inconstant eyes. And the lips 
so used to close upon the wine-cup, in laughter so 
often parted, they do not seem immobile, even 
now. Sad that one so prodigally endowed as he 
was, with the three essentials of a dandy—physical 
distinction, a sense of beauty and wealth or, if 
you prefer the term, credit—should not have done 
greater things. Much of his costume was merely 
showy or eccentric, without the rotund unity 
of the perfect fop’s. It had been well had he 
lacked that dash and spontaneous gallantry that 
make him cut, it may be, a more attractive figure 
than Beau Brummell. The youth of St. James’s 
gave him a wonderful welcome. The flight of 
Mr. Brummell had left them as sheep without a 
shepherd. They had even cried out against the 
inscrutable decrees of fashion and curtailed the 
height of their stocks. And (lo !) here, ambling 
down the Mall with tasselled cane, laughing in the 
window at White’s or in Fop’s Alley posturing, 
here, with the devil in his eyes and all the graces 
at his elbow, was D’Orsay, the prince paramount 
who should dominate London and should guard 
life from monotony by the daring of his whims. 
He accepted so many engagements that he often 
i5 


Dandies and Dandies 


dressed very quickly both in the morning and at 
nightfall. His brilliant genius would sometimes 
enable him to appear faultless, but at other times 
not even his fine figure could quite dispel the 
shadow of a toilet too hastily conceived. Before 
long he took that fatal step, his marriage with Lady 
Harriet Gardiner. The marriage, as w r e all know, 
was not a happy one, though the wedding was 
very pretty. It ruined the life of Lady Harriet 
and of her mother, the Blessington. It won the 
poor Count further still further from his art, and 
sent him spinning here, there, and everywhere. 
He was continually at Cleveden, or Belvoir, or 
Welbeck, laughing gaily as he brought down 
our English partridges, or at Crockford’s, smil¬ 
ing as he swept up our English guineas from the 
board. Holker declares that, excepting Mr. Tur¬ 
ner, he was the finest equestrian in London and 
describes how the mob would gather every morn¬ 
ing round his door to see him descend, insolent 
from his toilet, and mount and ride away. In¬ 
deed, he surpassed us all in all the exercises of the 
body. He even essayed preeminence in the arts 
(as if his own art were insufficient to his vitality !) 
and was for ever penning impenuous verses for cir- 
16 


Dandies and Dandies 


dilation among his friends. There was no great 
harm in this, perhaps. Even the handwriting of 
Mr. Brummell was not unknown in the albums. 
But D’Orsay’s painting of portraits is inexcusable. 
The aesthetic vision of a dandy should be bound¬ 
ed by his own mirror. A few crayon sketches of 
himself —dilectissimce imagines —are as much as he 
should ever do. That D’Orsay’s portraits, even 
his much-approved portrait of the Duke of Well¬ 
ington, are quite amateurish, is no excuse. It is 
the process of painting which is repellent; to 
force from little tubes of lead a glutinous flam¬ 
boyance and to defile, with the hair of a camel 
therein steeped, taut canvas, is hardly the diver¬ 
sion for a gentleman; and to have done all this 
for a man who was admittedly a field-marshal. . . 

I have often thought that this selfish concentra¬ 
tion, which is a part of dandyism, is also a symbol 
of that Einsamkeit felt in greater or less degree 
by the practitioners of every art. But, curiously 
enough, the very unity of his mind with the ground 
he works on exposes the dandy to the influence of 
the world. In one way dandyism is the least self¬ 
ish of all the arts. Musicians are seen and, ex¬ 
cept for a price, not heard. Only for a price may 


x 7 


Dandies and Dandies 


you read what poets have written. All painters 
are not so generous as Mr. Watts. But the dandy 
presents himself to the nation whenever he sallies 
from his front door. Princes and peasants alike 
may gaze upon his masterpieces. Now, any art 
which is pursued directly under the eye of the 
public is always far more amenable to fashion than 
is an art with which the public is but vicariously 
concerned. Those standards to which artists have 
gradually accustomed it the public will not see light¬ 
ly set at naught. Very rigid, for example, are the 
traditions of the theatre. If my brother were to 
declaim his lines at the Haymarket in the florotund 
manner of Macready, what a row there would be 
in the gallery ! It is only by the impalpable pro¬ 
cess of evolution that change comes to the theatre. 
Likewise in the sphere of costume no swift rebell¬ 
ion can succeed, as was exemplified by the Prince’s 
effort to revive knee-breeches. Had his Royal 
Highness elected, in his wisdom, to wear tight 
trousers strapped under his boots, “ smalls ” might 
in their turn, have reappeared, and at length— 
who knows?—knee-breeches. It is only by the 
trifling addition or elimination, modification or 
extension, made by this or that dandy and copied 
iS 


Dandies and Dandies 


by the rest, that the mode proceeds. The young 
dandy will find certain laws to which he must 
conform. If he outrage them he will be hooted 
by the urchins of the street, not unjustly, for he 
will have outraged the slowly constructed laws of 
artists who have preceded him. Let him reflect 
that fashion is no bondage imposed by alien hands, 
but the last wisdom of his own kind, and that 
true dandyism is the result of an artistic tempera¬ 
ment working upon a fine body within the wide 
limits of fashion. Through this habit of conformity, 
which it inculcates, the army has given us nearly 
all our finest dandies, from Alcibiades to Colonel 
Br*b*z*n, de nos jours. Even Mr. Brummell, 
though he defied his Colonel, must have owed 
some of his success to the military spirit. Any 
parent intending his son to be a dandy will do 
well to send him first into the army, there to learn 
humility, as did his archetype, Apollo, in the 
house of Admetus. A sojourn at one of the Pub¬ 
lic Schools is also to be commended. The Uni¬ 
versity it were well to avoid. 

Of course, the dandy, like any other artist, has 
moments when his own period, palling, inclines 
him to antique modes. A fellow-student once told 


19 


Dandies and Dandies 


me that, after a long vacation spent in touch with 
modern life, he had hammered at the little gate of 
Merton, and felt of a sudden his hat assume 
plumes and an expansive curl, the impress of a 
ruff about his neck, the dangle of a cloak and a 
sword. I, too, have my Elizabethan, my Caro¬ 
line moments. I have gone to bed Georgian 
and awoken Early Victorian. Even savagery has 
charmed me. And at such times I have often 
wished I could find in my wardrobe suitable cos¬ 
tumes. But these modish regrets are sterile, after 
all, and comprimend. What boots it to defy the 
conventions of our time ? The dandy is the “ child 
of his age,” and his best work must be produced 
in accord with the age’s natural influence. The 
true dandy must always love contemporary cos¬ 
tume. In this age, as in all precedent ages, it is 
only the tasteless who cavil, being impotent to 
win from it fair results. How futile their voices 
are ! The costume of the nineteenth century, as 
shadowed for us first by Mr. Brummell, so quiet, 
so reasonable, and, I say emphatically, so beauti¬ 
ful ; free from folly or affectation, yet susceptible 
to exquisite ordering; plastic, austere, economical, 
may not be ignored. I spoke of the doom of swift 


20 


Dandies and Dandies 


rebellions, but I doubt even if any soever gradual 
evolution will lead us astray from the general pre¬ 
cepts of Mr. BrummeH’s code. At every step in 
the progress of democracy those precepts will be 
strengthened. Every day their fashion is more 
secure, corroborate. They are acknowledged by 
the world. The barbarous costumes that in by¬ 
gone days were designed by class-hatred, or ha¬ 
tred of race, are dying, very surely dying. The 
costermonger with his pearl-emblazoned coat has 
been driven even from that Variety Stage whereon 
he sought a desperate sanctuary. The clinquant 
corselet of the Swiss girl just survives at bals cos¬ 
tumes. I am told that the kilt is now confined 
entirely to certain of the soldiery and to a small 
cult of Scotch Archaicists. I have seen men flock 
from the boulevards of one capital and from the 
avenues of another to be clad in Conduit Street. 
Even into Oxford, that curious little city, where 
nothing is ever born nor anything ever quite dies, 
the force of the movement has penetrated, inso¬ 
much that tasselled cap and gown of degree are 
rarely seen in the streets or colleges. In a place 
which was until recent times scarcely less remote, 
Japan, the white and scarlet gardens are trod by 


21 


Dandies and Dandies 


men who are shod in boots like our own, who 
walk—rather strangely still—in close-cut cloth of 
little color, and stop each other from time to 
time, laughing to show how that they too can furl 
an umbrella after the manner of real Europeans. 

It is very nice, this universal acquiescence in the 
dress we have designed, but, if we reflect, not 
wonderful. There are three apparent reasons, and 
one of them is aesthetic. So to clothe the body 
that its fineness be revealed and its meanness 
veiled has been the aesthetic aim of all costume, 
but before our time the mean had never been 
struck. The ancient Romans went too far. 
Muffled in the ponderous folds of a toga, Adonis 
might pass for Punchinello, Punchinello for 
Adonis. The ancient Britons, on the other 
hand, did not go far enough. And so it had 
been in all ages down to that bright morning 
when Mr. Brummell, at his mirror, conceived the 
notion of trousers and simple coats. Clad ac¬ 
cording to his convention, the limbs of the weak¬ 
ling escape contempt, and the athlete is unob¬ 
trusive, and all is well. But there is also a 
social reason for the triumph of our costume— 
the reason of economy. That austerity, which has 


22 


Dandies and Dandies 


rejected from its toilet silk and velvet and all but 
a few jewels, has made more ample the wardrobes 
of Dives, and sent forth Irus nicely dressed among 
his fellows. And lastly there is a reason of psy¬ 
chology, most potent of all, perhaps. Is not 
the costume of to-day, with its subtlety and 
sombre restraint, its quiet congruities of black 
and white and gray, supremely apt a medium for 
the expression of modern emotion and modern 
thought? That aptness, even alone, would ex¬ 
plain its triumph. Let us be glad that we have 
so easy, yet so delicate, a mode of expression. 

Yes! costume, dandiacal or not, is in the 
highest degree expressive, nor is there any type 
it may not express. It enables us to classify any 
“professional man” at a glance, be he lawyer, 
leech or what not. Still more swift and obvious 
is its revelation of the work and the soul of those 
who dress, whether naturally or for effect, without 
reference to convention. The bowler of Mr. 
Jerome K. Jerome is a perfect preface to all his 
works. The silk hat of Mr. Whistler is a real 
nocturne , his linen a symphony en blanc majeur. 
To have seen Mr. Hall Caine is to have read his 
soul. His flowing, formless cloak is as one of his 


23 


Dandies and Dandies 


own novels, twenty-five editions latent in the 
folds of it. Melodrama crouches upon the brim 
of his sombrero. His tie is a Publisher’s An¬ 
nouncement. His boots are Copyright. In his 
hand he holds the staff of The Family Herald. 

But the dandy, in nowise violating the laws of 
fashion, can make more subtle symbols of his per¬ 
sonality. More subtle these symbols are for the 
very reason that they are effected within the 
restrictions which are essential to an art. Chast¬ 
ened of all flamboyance, they are from most men 
occult, obvious, it may be, only to other artists 
or even only to him they symbolize. Nor will 
the dandy express merely a crude idea of his 
personality, as does, for example, Mr. Hall Caine, 
dressing himself always and exactly after one pat¬ 
tern. Every day as his mood has changed since 
his last toilet, he will vary the color, texture, 
form of his costume. Fashion does not rob him of 
free will. It leaves him liberty of all expression. 
Every day there is not one accessory, from the 
butterfly that alights above his shirt front to the 
jewels planted in his linen, that will not symbolize 
the mood that is in him or the occasion of the 
coming day. 


24 


Dandies and Dandies 


On this, the psychological side of foppery, I 
know not one so expert as him whom, not greatly 
caring for contemporary names, I will call Mr. 
Le V. No hero-worshipper am I, but I cannot 
write without enthusiasm of his simple life. He 
has not spurred his mind to the quest of shadows 
nor vexed his soul in the worship of any gods. 
No woman has wounded his heart, though he has 
gazed gallantly into the eyes of many women, 
intent, I fancy, upon his own miniature there. 
Nor is the incomparable set of his trousers spoilt 
by the perching of any dear little child upon his 
knee. And so, now that he is stricken with 
seventy years, he knows none of the bitterness of 
eld, for his toilet-table is an imperishable altar, 
his wardrobe a quiet nursery and very constant 
harem. Mr. Le V. has many disciples, young 
men who look to him for guidance in all that 
concerns costume, and each morning come, them¬ 
selves tentatively clad, to watch the perfect pro¬ 
cedure of his toilet and learn invaluable lessons. 
I myself, a lie-a-bed, often steal out, foregoing the 
best hours of the day abed, that I may attend that 
levee. The rooms of the Master are in St. James’s 
Street, and perhaps it were well that I should give 


25 


Dandies and Dandies 


some little record of them and of the manner of 
their use. In the first room the Master sleeps. 
He is called by one of his valets, at seven o’clock, 
to the second room, where he bathes, is sham¬ 
pooed, is manicured and, at length, is enveloped 
in a dressing-gown of white wool. In the third 
room is his breakfast upon a little table and his 
letters and some newspapers. Leisurely he sips 
his chocolate, leisurely learns all that need be 
known. With a cigarette he allows his temper, 
as informed by the news and the weather and what 
not, to develop itself tor the day. At length, his 
mood suggests, imperceptibly, what color, what 
form of clothes he shall wear. He rings for his 
valet —“ I will wear such and such a coat, such 
and such a tie; my trousers shall be of this or that 
tone; this or that jewel shall be radiant in the 
folds of my tie. ” It is generally near noon that 
he reaches the fourth room, the dressing-room. 
The uninitiate can hardly realize how impressive 
is the ceremonial there enacted. As I write, I 
can see, in memory, the whole scene—the room, 
severely simple, with its lemon walls and deep 
wardrobes of white wood, the young fops <£iA.o/xa- 
6 < z<jtoltol rives tu>v veavurxaH', ranged upon a long 
26 


Dandies and Dandies 


bench, rapt in wonder, and, in the middle, 
now sitting, now standing, negligently, before a 
long mirror, with a valet at either elbow, Mr. Le 
V , our cynosure. There is no haste, no faltering, 
when once the scheme of the day’s toilet has been 
set. It is a calm toilet. A flower does not grow 
more calmly. 

Any of us, any day, may see the gracious figure 
of Mr. Le V., as he saunters down the slope of St. 
James’s. Long may the sun irradiate the surface 
of his tilted hat! It is comfortable to know that, 
though he die to-morrow, the world will not lack 
a most elaborate record of his foppery. All his 
life he has kept or, rather, the current valets have 
kept for him, a Journal de Toilette . Of this there 
are now fifty volumes, each covering the space of 
a year. Yes, fifty springs have filled his button¬ 
hole with their violets; the snow of fifty winters 
has been less white than his linen ; his boots have 
outshone fifty sequences of summer suns and the 
colors of all those autumns have faded in the dry 
light of his apparel. The first page of each volume 
of the Journal de Toilette bears the signature of 
Mr. Le V. and of his two valets. Of the other pages 
each is given up, as in other diaries, to one day of 


27 


Dandies and Dandies 


the year. In ruled spaces are recorded there the 
cut and texture of the suit, the color of the tie, the 
form of jewelry that was worn on the day the page 
records. No detail is omitted and a separate space 
is set aside for “ Remarks.” I remember that I 
once asked Mr. Le V., half in jest, what he should 
wear on the Judgment Day. Seriously, and (I 
fancied) with a note of pathos in his voice, he said 
to me, “Young man, you ask me to lay bare my 
soul to you. If I had been a saint I should cer¬ 
tainly wear a light suit, with a white waistcoat and 
a flower, but I am no saint, sir, no saint. . . . 

I shall probably wear black trousers or trousers of 
some very dark blue, and a frock-coat, tightly but¬ 
toned.” Poor old Mr. Le V.! I think he need 
not fear. If there be a heaven for the soul, there 
must be other heavens also, where the intellect and 
the body shall be consummate. In both these heav¬ 
ens Mr. Le V. will have his hierarchy. Of a life 
like his there can be no conclusion, really. Did 
not even Matthew Arnold admit that conduct of a 
cane is three-fourths of life ? 

Certainly Mr. Le V. is a great artist, and his 
supremacy is in the tact with which he suits his 
toilet to his temperament. But the marvellous 
28 


Dandies and Dandies 


affinity of a dandy’s mood to his daily toilet is not 
merely that it finds therein its perfect echo nor 
that it may even be, in reflex, thereby accentuated 
or made less poignant. For some years I had felt 
convinced that in a perfect dandy this affinity 
must reach a point, when the costume itself, 
planned with the finest sensibility, would change 
with the emotional changes of its wearer, automat¬ 
ically. But I felt that here was one of those 
boundaries, where the fields of art align with the 
fields of science, and I hardly dared to venture 
further. Moreover, the theory was not easy to 
verify. I knew that, except in some great emotional 
crisis, the costume could not palpably change its 
aspect. Here was an impasse ; for the perfect dandy 
—the Brummell, the Mr. Le V.—cannot afford to 
indulge in any great emotion outside his art; like 
Balzac, he has not time. The gods were good to 
me, however. One morning near the end of last 
July, they decreed that I should pass through Half 
Moon Street and meet there a friend who should 
ask me to go with him to his club and watch for 
the results of the racing at Goodwood. This club 
includes hardly any member who is not a devotee 
of the Turf, so that, when we entered it, the cloak- 


29 


Dandies and Dandies 


room displayed long rows of unburdened pegs— 
save where one hat shone. None but that illus¬ 
trious dandy, Lord X., wears quite so broad a brim 
as this hat had. I said that Lord X. must be in 
the club. 

“ I conceive he is too nervous to be on the 
course,” my friend replied. “They say he has 
plunged up to the hilt on to-day’s running.” 

His lordship was indeed there, fingering fever¬ 
ishly the sinuous ribands of the tape-machine. I 
sat at a little distance, watching him. Two results 
straggled forth within an hour, and, at the second 
of these, I saw with wonder Lord X. ’s linen actually 
flush for a moment and then turn deadly pale. I 
looked again and saw that his boots had lost their 
lustre. Drawing nearer, I found that gray hairs had 
begun to show themselves in his raven coat. It 
was very painful and yet, to me, very gratifying. 
In the cloak-room, when I went for my own hat 
and cane, there was the hat with the broad brim, 
and (lo !) over its iron-blue surface little furrows 
had been ploughed by Despair. 

Rouen , i8g6. 


30 


A Good Prince 



A Good Prince 


I first saw him one morning of last summer, in 
the Green Park. Though short, even insignificant, 
in stature and with an obvious tendency to be 
obese, he had that unruffled, Olympian air, which is 
so sure a sign of the Blood Royal. In a suit of 
white linen he looked serenely cool, despite the 
heat. Perhaps I should have thought him, had I 
not been versed in the Almanack de Gotha , a 
trifle older than he is. He did not raise his 
hat in answer to my salute, but smiled most gra¬ 
ciously and made as though he would extend his 
hand to me, mistaking me, I doubt not, for one of 
his friends. Forthwith, a member of his suite 
said something to him in an undertone, whereat 
he smiled again and took no further notice of me. 

I do not wonder the people idolize him. His 
almost blameless life has been passed among them, 
nothing in it hidden from their knowledge. When 


33 


A Good Prince 


they look upon his dear presentment in the photog¬ 
rapher’s window—the shrewd, kindly eyes under 
the high forehead, the sparse locks so carefully dis¬ 
tributed—words of loyalty only and of admiration 
rise to their lips. For of all princes in modem 
days he seems to fulfil most perfectly the obliga¬ 
tion of princely rank. NrjTnos he might have 
been called in the heroic age, when princes were 
judged according to their mastery of the sword or 
of the bow, or have seemed, to those mediaeval 
eyes that loved to see a scholar’s pate under the 
crown, an ignoramus. We are less exigent now. 
We do but ask of our princes that they should 
live among us, be often manifest to our eyes, set a 
perpetual example of a right life. We bid them 
be the ornaments of our state. Too often they 
do not attain to our ideal. They give, it may 
be, a half-hearted devotion to soldiering, or pur¬ 
sue pleasure merely—tales of their frivolity raising 
now and again the anger of a public swift to 
envy them their temptations. But against this 
admirable Prince no such charges can be made. 
Never (as yet, at least) has he cared to “play 
at soldiers.” By no means has he shocked the 
Puritans. Though it is no secret that he prefers 


34 


A Good Prince 


the society of ladies, not one breath of scandal 
has ever tinged his name. Of how many English 
princes could this be said, in days when Figaro, 
quill in hand, inclines his ear to every keyhole ? 

Upon the one action that were well obliterated 
from his record I need not long insist. It seems 
that the wife of an aged ex-Premier came to have 
an audience and pay her respects. Hardly had 
she spoken when the Prince, in a fit of unreason¬ 
ing displeasure, struck her a violent blow with 
his clenched fist. Had His Royal Highness not 
always stood so far aloof from political conten¬ 
tion, it had been easier to find a motive for this 
unmannerly blow. The incident is deplorable, 
but it belongs, after all, to an earlier period of 
his life; and, were it not that no appreciation 
must rest upon the suppression of any scandal, 
I should not have referred to it. For the rest, 
I find no stain, soever faint, upon his life. The 
simplicity of his tastes is the more admirable for 
that he is known to care not at all for what may be 
reported in the newspapers. He has never touched 
a card, never entered a play-house. In no stud of 
racers has he indulged, preferring to the finest 
blood-horse ever bred a certain white and woolly 


35 


A Good Prince 


lamb with a blue riband to its neck. This he is 
never tired of fondling. It is with him, like the 
roebuck of Henri Quatre, wherever he goes. 

Suave and simple his life is ! Narrow in range, 
it may be, but with every royal appurtenance 
of delight, for to him Love’s happy favors are 
given and the tribute of glad homage, always, 
here and there and every other where. Round 
the flower-garden at Sandringham runs an old 
wall of red brick, streaked with ivy and topped 
infrequently with balls of stone. By its iron 
gates, that open to a vista of flowers, stand two 
kind policemen, guarding the Prince’s procedure 
along that bright vista. As his perambulator rolls 
out of the gate of St. James’s Palace, he stretches 
out his tiny hands to the scarlet sentinels. An 
obsequious retinue follows him over the lawns of 
the White Lodge, cooing and laughing, blowing 
kisses and praising him. Yet do not imagine his 
life has been all gaiety ! The afflictions that befall 
royal personages always touch very poignantly the 
heart of the people, and it is not too much to say 
that all England watched by the cradle-side of 
Prince Edward in that dolorous hour, when first the 
first little battlements rose about the rose-red roof 
36 



A Good Prince 


of his mouth. I am glad to think that not one 
querulous word did his Royal Highness, in his 
great agony, utter. They only say that his loud, 
incessant cries bore testimony to the perfect lungs 
for which the House of Hanover is most justly 
famed. Irreiterate be the horror of that epoch ! 

As yet, when we know not even what his first 
words will be, it is too early to predict what ver¬ 
dict posterity will pass upon him. Already he 
has won the hearts of the people; but, in the 
years which, it is to be hoped, still await him, he 
may accomplish more. Attendons / He stands 
alone among European princes—but, as yet, only 
with the aid of a chair. 

London , i8gj. 


37 



' i 



1880 





, 







1880 


Say, shall these things be forgotten 
In the Row that men call Rotten , 

Beauty Clare ? 

—Hamilton Aide. 

“History,” it has been said, “does not re¬ 
peat itself. The historians repeat one another.” 
Now, there are still some periods with which no 
historian has grappled, and, strangely enough, the 
period that most greatly fascinates me is one of them. 
The labor I set myself is therefore rather Hercu¬ 
lean. But it is also, for me, so far a labor of love 
that I can quite forget or even revel in its great 
difficulty. I would love to have lived in those 
bygone days, when first society was inducted into 
the mysteries of art and, not losing yet its old and 
elegant tenue , babbled of blue china and white 
lilies, of the painter Rossetti and the poet Swin¬ 
burne. It would be a splendid thing to have 


4i 


1880 


seen the tableaux at Cromwell House or to have 
made my way through the Fancy Fair and bar¬ 
tered all for a cigarette from a shepherdess; to 
have walked in the Park, straining my eyes for a 
glimpse of the Jersey Lily; danced the livelong 
afternoon to the strains of the Manola Valse; 
clapped holes in my gloves for Connie Gil¬ 
christ. 

It is a pity that the historians have held back 
so long. For this period is now so remote from 
us that much in it is nearly impossible to under- 

“ Cromwell House.” The residence of Lady Freake, a 
famous hostess of the day and founder of a brilliant salon, 
where even Royalty was sure of a welcome. The writer of 
a recent monograph declares that “ many a modern hostess 
would do well to emulate Lady Freake, not only in her 
taste for the Beautiful in Art but also for the Lntellectual 
in Conversation .” 

“Fancy Fair.” Fora full account of this function, 
see pp. 102-124. of the “ Annals of the Albert Hall." 

“ Jersey Lily.” A fanciful title bestowed, at this time, 
upon the beautiful Mrs. Langtry, who was a native of 
Jersey Island. See also p. 52. 

“ Manola Valse.” Supposed to have been introduced by 
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who, having heard it in 
Vienna, was pleased, for a while, by its novelty, but soon 
reverted to the more sprightly deux-temps. 


42 






1880 


stand, more than a little must be left in the mists 
of antiquity that involve it. The memoirs of the 
day are, indeed, many, but not exactly illumina¬ 
tive. From such writers as Frith , Montague Will- 
iams, or the Bancrofts , you may gain but little 
peculiar knowledge. That quaint old chronicler, 
Lucy , dilates amusingly enough upon the frown of 
Sir Richard (afterwards Lord) Cross or the tea- 
rose in the Prime Minister’s button-hole. But 
what can he tell us of the negotiations that’ led 
Gladstone back to public life or of the secret coun¬ 
cils of the Fourth Party, whereby Sir Stafford was 
gradually eclipsed ? Good memoirs must ever be 
the cumulation of gossip. Gossip (alas !) has been 
killed by the Press. In the tavern or the bar- 
ber’s-shop, all secrets passed into every ear. From 
newspapers how little can be culled! Manifestations 
are there made manifest to us and we are taught, 
with tedious iteration, the things w r e knew, and 
need not have known, before. In my research, I 
have had only such poor guides as Punch , or the 
London Charivari and The Queen , the Lady's 
Newspaper . Excavation, which in the East has 
been productive of rich material for the archaeolo¬ 
gist, was indeed suggested to me. I was told that, 


43 


1880 


just before Cleopatra’s Needle was set upon the 
Embankment, an iron box, containing a photo¬ 
graph of Mrs. Langtry, some current coins and 
other trifles of the time, was dropped into the 
foundation. I am sure much might be done with 
a spade, here and there, in the neighborhood of 
old Cromwell House. Accursed be the obduracy 
of vestries ! Be not I, but they, blamed for any 
error, obscurity or omission in my brief excursus. 

The period of 1880 and of the two successive 
years should ever be memorable, for it marks a 
great change in the constitution of English society. 
It would seem that, under the quiet regime of the 
Tory Cabinet, the upper ten thousand, (as they 
were quaintly called in those days,) had taken a 
somewhat more frigid tone. The Prince of Wales 
had inclined to be restful after the revels of his 
youth. The prolonged seclusion of Queen Vic¬ 
toria, who was then engaged upon that superb 
work of introspection and self - analysis, More 
Leaves from the Highlands , had begun to tell upon 
the social system. Balls and other festivities, both 
at Court and in the houses of the nobles, were 
notably fewer. The vogue of the Opera was pass¬ 
ing. Even in the top of the season, Rotten Row, 


44 


I read, was not impenetrably crowded. But in 
1880 came the tragic fall of Disraeli and the tri¬ 
umph of the Whigs. How great a change came 
then upon Westminster must be known to any one 
who has studied the annals of Gladstone’s incom¬ 
parable Parliament. Gladstone himself, with a 
monstrous majority behind him, revelling in the 
old splendor of speech that not seventy summers 
nor six years’ sulking had made less ; Parnell, 
deadly, mysterious, with his crew of wordy peasants 
that were to set all Saxon things at naught—the 
activity of these two men alone would have made 
this Parliament supremely stimulating throughout 
the land. What of young Randolph Churchill, 
who, despite his halting speech, foppish mien and 
rather coarse fibre of mind, was yet the greatest 
Parliamentarian of his day ? What of Justin Huntly 
McCarthy, under his puerile mask a most dark, 
most dangerous conspirator, who, lightly swinging 
the sacred lamp of burlesque, irradiated with fear¬ 
ful clarity the wrath and sorrow of Ireland ? What 
of Blocker Warton ? What of the eloquent atheist, 
Charles Bradlaugh, pleading at the Bar, striding 
past the furious Tories to the very Mace, hustled 
down the stone steps with the broadcloth torn in 
45 


1880 


ribands from his back? Surely such scenes will 
never more be witnessed at St. Stephen’s. Imagine 
the existence of God being made a party question ! 
No wonder that at a time of such turbulence fine 
society also should have shown the primordia of 
a great change. It was felt that the aristocracy 
could not live by good-breeding alone. The old 
delights seemed vapid, waxen. Something vivid 
was desired. And so the sphere of fashion con¬ 
verged with the sphere of art, and revolution was 
the result. 

Be it remembered that long before this time 
there had been in the heart of Chelsea a kind of 
cult for Beauty. Certain artists had settled there, 
deliberately refusing to work in the ordinary offi¬ 
cial way, and ‘ ‘ wrought ’ ’ as they were wont to 
asseverate, “ for the pleasure and sake of all that 
is fair.” Little commerce had they with the 
brazen world. Nothing but the light of the sun 
would they share with men. Quietly and unbe¬ 
known, callous of all but their craft, they wrought 
their poems or their pictures, gave them one to 
another, and wrought on. Meredith, Rossetti, 
Swinburne, Morris, Holman Hunt were in this 
band of shy artificers. In fact, Beauty had existed 
46 



1880 


long before 1880. It was Mr. Oscar Wilde who 
managed her debut. To study the period is to 
admit that to him was due no small part of the 
social vogue that Beauty began to enjoy. Fired 
by his fervid words, men and women hurled their 
mahogany into the streets and ransacked the curio- 
shops for the furniture of Annish days. Dados 
arose upon every wall, sunflowers and the feathers 
of peacocks curved in every corner, tea grew quite 
cold while the guests were praising the Willow 
Pattern of its cup. A few fashionable women 
even dressed themselves in sinuous draperies and 
unheard-of greens. Into whatsoever ball-room you 
went, you would surely find, among the women in 
tiaras and the fops and the distinguished foreign¬ 
ers, half a score of comely ragamuffins in velveteen, 
murmuring sonnets, posturing, waving their hands. 
Beauty was sought in the most unlikely places. 
Young painters found her mobbled in the fogs, and 
bank-clerks, versed in the writings of Mr. Hamer - 
ton, were heard to declare, as they sped home 
from the City, that the Underground Railway was 
beautiful from London Bridge to Westminster, but 
not from Sloane Square to Notting Hill Gate. 

HLstheticism, (for so they named the movement,) 


47 


1880 


did indeed permeate, in a manner, all classes. But 
it was to the haut monde that its primary appeal 
was made. The sacred emblems of Chelsea were 
sold in the fashionable toy-shops, its reverently 
chanted creeds became the patter of the boudoirs. 
The old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of the 
few, was verily invaded. Never was such a fusion 
of delightful folk as at its Private Views. There 

“Private Views.” This passage, which I found in a 
contemporary chronicle, is so quaint and so instinct with 
the spirit of its time that T am fain to quote it : 

“ There were quaint, beautiful, extraordinary costumes 
walking about — ultra-cesthetics, artistic aesthetics, cesthetics 
that made up their minds to be daring, and suddenly gave 
way in some important point—put a frivolous bonnet on the 
top of a grave and flowing garment that Albert Diirer 
might have designed for a mantle. There were fashion¬ 
able costumes that Mrs. Mason or Madame Elise might 
have turned out that morning. The motley crowd mingled, 
forming into groups, sometimes dazzling you by the array 
of colors that you never thought to see in full daylight. 

. . . Canary-colored garments flitted cheerily by gar¬ 

ments of the saddest green. A hat in an agony of pokes 
and angles was seen in company with a bonnet that was a 
gay garland of flowers. A vast cape that might have en¬ 
shrouded the form of a Mater Dolorosa hung by the side of 
a jauntily-striped Langtry hood." 

48 


1880 


was Robert Browning, the philosopher, doffing his 
hat with a courtly sweep to more than one Duchess. 
There, too, was Theo Marzials, poet and eccentric, 
and Charles Colnaghi, the hero of a hundred tea- 
fights, and young Brookfield, the comedian, and 
many another good fellow. My Lord of Dudley, 
the virtuoso , came there, leaning for support upon 
the arm of his fair young wife. Disraeli, with his 
lustreless eyes and face like some seamed Hebraic 
parchment, came also, and whispered behind his 
hand to the faithful Corry. And Walter Sickert 
spread the latest mot of “ the Master,” who, with 
monocle, cane and tilted hat, flashed through the 
gay mob anon. 

Autrement , there was Coombe Wood, in whose 
shade the Lady Archibald Campbell suffered more 
than one of Shakespeare’s plays to be enacted. 
Hither, from the garish, indelicate theatre that held 
her languishing, Thalia was bidden, if haply, un- 

Thc “ Master.” By this title his disciples used to ad¬ 
dress James Whistler , the author-artist. Without echoing 
the obloquy that was lavished at Jirst nor the praise that zvas 
lavished later upon his pictures, we must admit that he 
was , at least, a great master of English prose and a con¬ 
troversialist of no mean power. 

49 


1880 


der the open sky, she might resume her old charm. 
All Fashion came to marvel and so did all the 
Esthetes, in the heart of one of whose leaders, 
Godwin, that superb architect, the idea was first 
conceived. Real Pastoral Plays! Lest the in¬ 
vited guests should get any noxious scent of the 
footlights across the grass, only amateurs were ac¬ 
corded parts. They roved through a real wood, 
these jerkined amateurs, with the poet’s music upon 
their lips. Never under such dark and griddled 
elms had the outlaws feasted upon their venison. 
Never had any Rosalind traced with such shy 
wonder the writing of her lover upon the bark, nor 
any Orlando won such laughter for his not really 
sportive dalliance. Fairer than the mummers, it 
may be, were the ladies who sat and watched them 
from the lawn. All of them wore jerseys and tied- 
back skirts. Zulu hats shaded their eyes from the 
sun. Bangles shimmered upon their wrists. And 
the gentlemen wore light frock-coats and light top- 
hats with black bands. And the ^Esthetes were 
in velveteen, carrying lilies. 

Not that Art and Fashion shunned the theatre. 
They began in 1880 to affect it as never before. 
The one invaded Irving’s premieres at the Lyceum. 
50 


1880 


The other sang paeans in praise of the Bancrofts. 
The French plays, too, were the fained delight of 
all the modish world. Not to have seen Chaumont 
in Totot chez Tata was held a solecism. The 
homely mesdames and messieurs from the Parisian 
boards were “ lionized ” (how strangely that phrase 
rings to modern ears !) in ducal drawing-rooms. In 
fact, all the old prejudice of rank was being swept 
away. Even more significant than the reception 
of players was a certain effort, made at this time, 
to raise the average of aristocratic loveliness—an 
effort that, but a few years before, would have been 
surely scouted as quite undignified and outrageous. 
What the term “Professional Beauty” signified, 
how any lady gained a right to it, we do not and 
may never know. It is certain, however, that 
there were many ladies of tone, upon whom it was 
bestowed. They received special attention from 
the Prince of Wales and hostesses would move 
heaven and earth to have them in their rooms. 
Their photographs were on sale in the window of 
every shop. Crowds assembled every morning, 
to see them start for Rotten Row. Preeminent 
among Professional Beauties were Lady Lonsdale 
(afterwards Lady de Grey), Mrs. Wheeler, who 
5i 


1880 


always “appeared in black,” and Mrs. Cornwal¬ 
lis-West, who was Amy Robsart in the tableaux 
at Cromwell House, when Mrs. Langtry, cette 
Cleopatre de son siecle appeared also, stepping 
across an artificial brook, in the pink kirtle of 
Effie Deans. We may doubt whether the move¬ 
ment, represented by these ladies, was quite in ac¬ 
cord with the dignity and elegance that always 
should mark the best society. Any effort to make 
Beauty compulsory robs Beauty of its chief charm. 
But, at the same time, I do believe that this move¬ 
ment, so far as it was informed by a real wish to 
raise a practical standard of feminine charm for all 
classes, does not deserve the strictures that have 
been passed upon it by posterity. One of its im¬ 
mediate sequels was the incursion of American 
ladies into London. Then it was that these pretty 
creatures, “clad in Worth’s most elegant confec¬ 
tions,” drawled their way through our greater 
portals. Fanned, as they were, by the feathers of 
the Prince of Wales, they had a great success, and 
they were so strange that their voices and their 
dresses were mimicked partout . The English beau¬ 
ties were rather angry, especially with the Prince, 
whom alone they blamed for the vogue of their 


52 


1880 


rivals. History credits His Royal Highness with 
many notable achievements. Not the least of these 
is that he discovered the inhabitants of America. 

It will be seen that in this renaissance the keen¬ 
est students of the exquisite were women. Never¬ 
theless, men were not idle, neither. Since the day 
of Mr. Brummell and King George, the noble art 
of self - adornment had fallen partially desuete. 
Great fops like Bulwer and le jeune Cupidon had 
come upon the town, but never had they formed 
a school. Dress, therefore, had become simpler, 
wardrobes smaller, fashions apt to linger. In 1880 
arose the sect that was soon to win for itself the 
title of “ The Mashers.” What this title exactly 
signified I suppose no two etymologists will ever 
agree. But we can learn clearly enough, from 

“ Masher.” One authority derives the title, rather 
ingeniously, from “ Ma Chi re," the mode of address used 
by the gilded youth to the barmaids of the period—whence 
the corruption “ Masher." Another traces it to the chorus 
of a song, which, at that time, had a great vogue in the 
music-halls: 

“ I'm the slashing, dashing, mashing Montmorency of 
the day. ” 

This, in my opinion, is the safer suggestion, and may be 
adopted. 


53 


1880 


the fashion-plates of the day, what the Mashers 
were in outward semblance; from the lampoons, 
their mode of life. Unlike the dandies of the 
Georgian era, they pretended to no classic taste 
and, wholly contemptuous of the .^Esthetes, recog¬ 
nized no art save the art of dress. Much might 
be written about the Mashers. The restaurant— 
destined to be, in after years, so salient a delight 
of London—was not known to them, but they 
were often admirable upon the steps of clubs. 
The Lyceum held them never, but nightly they 
gathered at the Gaiety Theatre. Nightly the 
stalls were agog with small, sleek heads surmount¬ 
ing collars of interminable height. Nightly, in 
the foyer , were lisped the praises of Kate Vaughan, 
her graceful dancing, or of Nellie Farren, her 
matchless fooling. Never a night passed but the 
dreary stage-door was cinct with a circlet of fools 
bearing bright bouquets, of flaxen-headed fools 
who had feet like black needles, and graceful fools 
incumbent upon canes. A strange cult! I once 
knew a lady whose father was actually present at 
the first night of “ The Forty Thieves,” and fell 
enamoured of one of the coryphees. By such links 
is one age joined to another. 


54 


1880 


There is always something rather absurd about 
the past. For us, who have fared on, the silhou¬ 
ette of Error is sharp upon the past horizon. As 
we look back upon any period, its fashions seem 
grotesque, its ideals shallow, for we know how 
soon those ideals and those fashions were to per¬ 
ish, and how rightly; nor can we feel a little of 
the fervor they did inspire. It is easy to laugh at 
these Mashers, with their fantastic raiment and 
languid lives, or at the strife of the Professional 
Beauties. It is easy to laugh at all that ensued 
when first the mummers and the stainers of can¬ 
vas strayed into Mayfair. Yet shall I laugh? 
For me the most romantic moment of a pantomime 
is always when the winged and wired fairies begin 
to fade away, and, as they fade, clown and panta¬ 
loon tumble on joppling and grimacing, seen very 
faintly in that indecisive twilight. The social 
condition of 1880 fascinates me in the same way. 
Its contrasts fascinate me. 

Perhaps, in my study of the period, I may have 
fallen so deeply beneath its spell that I have 
tended, now and again, to overrate its real im¬ 
port. I lay no claim to the true historical spirit. 
I fancy it was a chalk drawing of a girl in a mob- 


55 


1880 


cap, signed “ Frank Miles, 1880,” that first im¬ 
pelled me to research. To give an accurate and 
exhaustive account of that period would need a 
far less brilliant pen than mine. But I hope that, 
by dealing, even so briefly as I have dealt, with 
its more strictly sentimental aspects, I may have 
lightened the task of the scientific historian. And 
I look to Professor Gardiner and to the Bishop of 
Oxford. 


London, 1894. 


King George the Fourth 








King George the Fourth 


They say that when King George was dying, a 
special form of prayer for his recovery, composed 
by one of the Archbishops, was read aloud to him 
and that His Majesty, after saying Amen “ thrice, 
with great fervor,” begged that his thanks might 
be conveyed to its author. To the student of 
royalty in modern times there is something rather 
suggestive in this incident. I like to think of the 
drug-scented room at Windsor and of the King, 
livid and immobile among his pillows, whiting, in 
superstitious awe, for the near moment when he 
must stand, a spirit, in the presence of a perpetual 
King. I like to think of him following the futile 
prayer with eyes and lips, and then, custom re¬ 
surgent in him and a touch of pride that, so long 
as the blood moved ever so little in his veins, he 
was still a king, expressing a desire that the dutiful 
feeling and admirable taste of the Prelate should 
59 


King George the Fourth 

receive a suitable acknowledgment. It would 
have been impossible for a real monarch like 
George, even after the gout had turned his 
thoughts heavenward, really to abase himself 
before his Maker. But he could, so to say, treat 
with Him, as he might have treated with a fellow- 
sovereign, in a formal way, long after diplomacy 
was quite useless. How strange it must be to be 
a king ! How delicate and difficult a task it is to 
judge him ! So far as I know, no attempt has 
been made to judge King George the Fourth 
fairly. The hundred and one eulogies and lam¬ 
poons, irresponsibly published during and im¬ 
mediately after his reign, are not worth a wooden 
hoop in Hades. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has pub¬ 
lished a history of George’s reign, in which he 
has so artistically subordinated his own person¬ 
ality to his subject, that I can scarcely find, from 
beginning to end of the two bulky volumes, a 
single opinion expressed, a single idea, a single 
deduction from the admirably ordered facts. All 
that most of us know of George is from Thack¬ 
eray’s brilliant denunciation. Now, I yield to 
few in my admiration of Thackeray’s powers. 
He had a charming style. We never find him 
60 



King George the Fourth 


searching for the mot juste as for a needle in a 
bottle of hay. Could he have looked through a 
certain window by the river at Croisset or in the 
quadrangle at Brasenose, how he would have 
laughed! He blew on his pipe, and words came 
tripping round him, like children, like pretty 
little children who are perfectly drilled for the 
dance, or came, did he will it, treading in their 
precedence, like kings, gloomily. And I think it 
is to the credit of the reading mob that, by reason 
of his beautiful style, all that he said was taken 
for the truth, without questioning. But truth 
after all is eternal, and style transient, and now 
that Thackeray’s style is becoming, if I may say 
so, a trifle i860, it may not be amiss that we 
should inquire whether his estimate of George is 
in substance and fact worth anything at all. It 
seems to me that, as in his novels, so in his his¬ 
tory of the four Georges, Thackeray made no 
attempt at psychology. He dealt simply with 
types. One George he insisted upon regarding 
as a buffoon, another as a yokel. The Fourth 
George he chose to hold up for reprobation as a 
drunken, vapid cad. Every action, every phase 
of his life that went to disprove this view, he 
61 


King George the Fourth 


either suppressed or distorted utterly. “His¬ 
tory,” he would seem to have chuckled, “has 
nothing to do with the First Gentleman. But I 
will give him a niche in Natural History. He 
shall be King of the Beasts.” He made no al¬ 
lowance for the extraordinary conditions under 
which all monarchs live, none for the unfortunate 
circumstances by which George, especially, was 
from the first hampered. He judged him as he 
judged Barnes Newcome and all the scoundrels he 
created. Moreover, he judged him by the moral 
standard of the Victorian Age. In fact, he applied 
to his subject the wrong method, in the wrong 
manner, and at the wrong time. And yet every 
one has taken him at his word. I feel that my 
essay may be scouted as a paradox; but I hope 
that many may recognize that I am not, out of 
mere boredom, endeavoring to stop my ears 
against popular platitude, but rather, in a spirit of 
real earnestness, to point out to the mob how it 
has been cruel to George. I do not despair of 
success. I think I shall make converts. The 
mob is really very fickle and sometimes cheers the 
truth. 

None, at all events, will deny that England 
62 


King George the Fourth 


stands to-day otherwise than she stood a hundred 
and thirty-two years ago, when George was born. 
To-day we are living a decadent life. All the 
while that we are prating of progress, we are really 
so deteriorate ! There is nothing but feebleness 
in us. Our youths, who spend their days in trying 
to build up their constitutions by sport or athletics 
and their evenings in undermining them with 
poisonous and dyed drinks; our daughters, who 
are ever searching for some new quack remedy for 
new imaginary megrim, what strength is there in 
them ? We have our societies for the prevention 
of this and the promotion of that and the propaga¬ 
tion of the other, because there are no individuals 
among us. Our sexes are already nearly assimilate. 
Women are becoming nearly as rare as ladies, and 
it is only at the music-halls that we are privileged 
to see strong men. We are born into a poor, 
weak age. We are not strong enough to be 
wicked, and the Nonconformist Conscience makes 
cowards of us all. 

But this was not so in the days when George 
was walking by his tutor’s side in the gardens of 
Kew or of Windsor. London must have been a 
splendid place in those days — full of life and 
63 


King George the Fourth 

color and wrong and revelry. There was no 
absurd press nor vestry to protect the poor at the 
expense of the rich and see that everything should 
be neatly adjusted. Every man had to shift for 
himself and, consequently, men were, as Mr. 
Clement Scott would say, manly, and women, as 
Mr. Clement Scott would say, womanly. In 
those days, a young man of wealth and family 
found open to him a vista of such license as had 
been unknown to any since the barbatuli of the 
Roman Empire. To spend the early morning 
with his valet, gradually assuming the rich apparel 
that was not then tabooed by a hard sumptuary 
standard ; to saunter round to White’s for ale and 
tittle-tattle and the making of wagers; to attend a 
“drunken dejeuner ” in honor of “la Ires belle 
Rosaline ’ ’ or the Strappini; to drive some fellow- 
fool far out into the country in his pretty curricle, 
“ followed by two well-dressed and well-mounted 
grooms, of singular elegance certainly,” and stop 
at every tavern on the road to curse the host for 
not keeping better ale and a wench of more charm ; 
to reach St. James’s in time for a random toilet 
and so off to dinner. Which of our dandies 
could survive a day of pleasure such as this? 

64 


King George the Fourth 


Which would be ready, dinner done, to scamper 
off again to Ranelagh and dance and skip and sup 
in the rotunda there ? Yet the youth of that 
period would not dream of going to bed or ever 
he had looked in at Crockford’s —tanta lubido 
arum —for a few hours’ faro. 

This was the kind of life that young George- 
found opened to him, when, at length, in his 
nineteenth year, they gave him an establishment 
in Buckingham House. How his young eyes 
must have sparkled, and with what glad gasps must 
he have taken the air of freedom into his lungs ! 
Rumor had long been busy with the damned sur¬ 
veillance under which his childhood had been 
passed. A paper of the time says significantly 
that “the Prince of Wales, with a spirit which 
does him honor, has three times requested a change 
in that system.” King George had long post¬ 
poned permission for his son to appear at any balls, 
and the year before had only given it, lest he 
should offend the Spanish Minister, who begged 
it as a personal favor. I know few pictures more 
pathetic than that of George, then an overgrown 
boy of fourteen, tearing the childish frill from 
around his neck and crying to one of the royal 

65 


King George the Fourth 


servants, “ See how they treat me ! ” Childhood 
has always seemed to me the tragic period of life. 
To be subject to the most odious espionage at the 
one age when you never dream of doing wrong, 
to be deceived by your parents, thwarted of your 
smallest wish, oppressed by the terrors of man¬ 
hood and of the world to come, and to believe, as 
you are told, that childhood is the only happiness 
known ; all this is quite terrible. And all Royal 
children, of whom I have read, particularly 
George, seemed to have passed through greater 
trials in childhood than do the children of any 
other class. Mr. Fitzgerald, hazarding for once 
an opinion, thinks that “the stupid, odious, Ger¬ 
man, sergeant-system of discipline that had been 
so rigorously applied was, in fact, responsible for 
the blemishes of the young Prince’s character.” 
Even Thackeray, in his essay upon George III., 
asks what wonder that the son, finding himself free 
at last, should have plunged, without looking, into 
the vortex of dissipation. In Torrens’s Life of 
Lord Melbourne we learn that Lord Essex, riding 
one day with the King, met the young prince 
wearing a wig, and that the culprit, being sternly 
reprimanded by his father, replied that he had 
66 


King George the Fourth 

“ been ordered by his doctor to wear a wig, for 
he was subject to cold.” Whereupon the King, 
to vent the aversion he already felt for his son, or, 
it may have been, glorying in the satisfactory re¬ 
sult of his discipline, turned to Lord Essex and 
remarked, ‘ ‘A lie is ever ready when it is wanted. ’ ’ 
George never lost this early-ingrained habit of lies. 
It is to George’s childish fear of his guardians that 
we must trace that extraordinary power of bam¬ 
boozling his courtiers, his ministry, and his mis¬ 
tresses that distinguished him through his long life. 
It is characteristic of the man that he should him¬ 
self have bitterly deplored his own untruthfulness. 
When, in after years, he was consulting Lady 
Spencer upon the choice of a governess for his 
child, he made this remarkable speech, “Above 
all, she must be taught the truth. You know that 
I don’t speak the truth and my brothers don’t, and 
I find it a great defect, from which I would have 
my daughter free. We have been brought up badly, 
the Queen having taught us to equivocate .” You 
may laugh at the picture of the little chubby, 
curly-headed fellows learning to equivocate at their 
mother’s knee, but pray remember that the wisest 
master of ethics himself, in his theory of c£eis 
67 


King George the Fourth 


aTroheiKTLKcu, similarly raised virtues, such as telling 
the truth, to the level of regular accomplishments, 
and, before you judge poor George harshly in his 
entanglements of lying, think of the cruelly un¬ 
wise education he had undergone. 

However much we may deplore this exaggerated 
tyranny, by reason of its evil effect upon his moral 
nature, we cannot but feel glad that it existed, to 
afford a piquant contrast to the life awaiting him. 
Had he passed through the callow dissipations of 
Eton and Oxford, like other young men of his age, 
he would assuredly have lacked much of that splen¬ 
did, pent vigor with which he rushed headlong into 
London life. He was so young and so handsome 
and so strong, that can we wonder if all the women 
fell at his feet ? ‘ ‘ The graces of his person, ’ ’ says 
one whom he honored by an intrigue, “ the ir¬ 
resistible sweetness of his smile, the tenderness of 
his melodious, yet manly voice, will be remem¬ 
bered by me till every vision of this changing 
scene are forgotten. The polished and fascinating 
ingenuousness of his manners contributed not a 
little to enliven our promenade. He sang with ex¬ 
quisite taste, and the tones of his voice, breaking 
on the silence of the night, have often appeared 
68 


King George the Fourth 


to my entranced senses like more than mortal 
melody.” But besides his graces of person, he 
had a most delightful wit, he was a scholar who 
could bandy quotations with Fox or Sheridan, 
and, like the young men of to-day, he knew all 
about Art. He spoke French, Italian, and German 
perfectly. Crossdill had taught him the violon¬ 
cello. At first, as was right for one of his age, he 
cared more for the pleasures of the table and of 
the ring, for cards and love. He was wont to 
go down to Ranelagh surrounded by a retinue of 
bruisers — rapscallions, such as used to follow 
Clodius through the streets of Rome — and he 
loved to join in the scuffles like any commoner. 
Pugilism he learnt from Angelo and he was con¬ 
sidered by some to be a fine performer. On one 
occasion, too, at an exposition d'escrime , when he 
handled the foils against the maitre , he “ was 
highly complimented upon his graceful postures.” 
In fact, despite all his accomplishments, he seems 
to have been a thoroughly manly young fellow. 
He was just the kind of figure-head Society had 
long been in need of. A certain lack of tone had 
crept into the amusements of the haut monde , due, 
doubtless, to the lack of an acknowledged leader. 

69 


King George the Fourth 


The King was not yet mad, but he was always 
bucolic, and socially out of the question. So at 
the coming of his son Society broke into a gallop. 
Balls and masquerades were given in his honor 
night after night. Good Samaritans must have 
approved when they found that at these entertain¬ 
ments great ladies and courtesans brushed beautiful 
shoulders in utmost familiarity, but those who de¬ 
lighted in the high charm of society probably 
shook their heads. We need not, however, find it 
a flaw in George’s social bearing that he did not 
check this kind of freedom. At the first, as a young 
man full of life, of course he took everything as it 
came, joyfully. No one knew better than he did, 
in later life, that there is a time for laughing with 
great ladies and a time for laughing with cour¬ 
tesans. But as yet it was not possible for him to 
exert influence. How great that influence became 
I will suggest hereafter. 

I like to think of him as he was at this period, 
charging about, in pursuit of pleasure, like a young 
bull. The splendid taste for building had not yet 
come to him. His father would not hear of him 
patronizing the turf. But already he was im- 
plected with a passion for dress and seems to have 


70 


King George the Fourth 

erred somewhat on the side of dressing up, as is 
the way of young men. It is fearful to think of 
him, as Cyrus Redding saw him, “ arrayed in 
deep-brown velvet, silver embroidered, with cut- 
steel buttons, and a gold net thrown over all. * ’ 
Before that “gold net thrown over all,” all the 
mistakes of his after-life seem to me to grow almost 
insignificant. Time, however, toned his too florid 
sense of costume, and we should at any rate be 
thankful that his imagination never deserted him. 
All the delightful munditiae that we find in the 
contemporary “fashion-plates for gentlemen” can 
be traced to George himself. His were the much- 
approved “quadruple stock of great dimension,” 
the “cocked gray-beaver,” the pantaloons of 
mauve silk “ negligently crinkled ” and any 
number of other little pomps and foibles of the 
kind. As he grew older and was obliged to 
abandon many of his more vigorous pastimes, he 
grew more and more enamoured of the pleasures of 
the wardrobe. He would spend hours, it is said, 
in designing coats for his friends, liveries for his 
servants, and even uniforms. Nor did he ever 
make the mistake of giving away outmoded clothes 
to his valets, but kept them to form what must 


7i 


King George the Fourth 


have been the finest collection of clothes that has 
been seen in modern times. With a sentimentality 
that is characteristic of him, he would often, as he 
sat, crippled by gout, in his room at Windsor, 
direct his servant to bring him this or that coat, 
which he had worn ten or twenty or thirty years 
before, and, when it was brought to him, spend 
much time in laughing or sobbing over the mem¬ 
ories that lay in its folds. It is pleasant to know 
that George, during his long and various life, 
never forgot a coat, however long ago worn, how¬ 
ever seldom. 

But in the early days of which I speak he had 
not yet touched that self-conscious note which, in 
manner and mode of life, as well as in costume, he 
was to touch later. He was too violently enam¬ 
oured of all around him, to think very deeply of 
himself. But he had already realized the tragedy 
of the voluptuary, which is, after a little time, not 
that he must go on living, but that he cannot live 
in two places at once. We have, at this end of the 
century, tempered this tragedy by the perfection of 
railways, and it is possible for our good Prince, 
whom Heaven bless, to waken to the sound of the 
Braemar bagpipes, while the music of Mdlle. 


King George the Fourth 

Guilbert’s latest song, cooed over the footlights of 
the Concerts Parisiens, still rings in his ears. But 
in the time of our Prince’s illustrious great-uncle 
there were not railways; and we find George per¬ 
petually driving, for wagers, to Brighton and back 
(he had already acquired that taste for Brighton 
which was one of his most lovable qualities) in 
incredibly short periods of time. The rustics who 
lived along the road were well accustomed to the 
sight of a high, tremulous phaeton flashing past 
them, and the crimson face of the young prince 
bending over the horses. There is something 
absurd in representing George as, even before he 
came of age, a hardened and cynical profligate, 
an Elagabalus in trousers. His blood flowed fast 
enough through his veins. All his escapades were 
those of a healthful young man of the time. Need 
we blame him if he sought, every day, to live 
faster and more fully ? 

In a brief essay like this, I cannot attempt to 
write, as I hope one day to do, in any detail a his¬ 
tory of George’s career, during the time when he 
was successively Prince of Wales and Regent and 
King. Merely is it my wish at present to examine 
some of the principal accusations that have been 


73 


King George the Fourth 

brought against him, and to point out in what 
ways he has been harshly and hastily judged. Per¬ 
haps the greatest indignation against him was, and 
is to this day, felt by reason of his treatment of his 
two wives, Mrs. Fitzherbert and Queen Caroline. 
There are some scandals that never grow old, and 
I think the story of George’s married life is one 
of them. It was a real scandal. I can feel it. It 
has vitality. Often have I wondered whether the 
blood with which the young Prince’s shirt was 
saturate when Mrs. Fitzherbert was first induced to 
visit him at Carlton House, was merely red paint, 
or if, in a frenzy of love, he had truly gashed him¬ 
self with a razor. Certain it is that his passion 
for the virtuous and obdurate lady was a very real 
one. Lord Holland describes how the Prince 
used to visit Mrs. Fox, and there indulge in “ the 
most extravagant expressions and actions—rolling 
on the floor, striking his forehead, tearing his 
hair, falling into hysterics, and swearing that he 
would abandon the country, forego the crown, 
&c.” He was indeed still a child, for royalties, 
not being ever brought into contact with the real¬ 
ities of life, remain young far longer than other 
people. Cursed with a truly royal lack of self- 
74 


King George the Fourth 


control, he was unable to bear the idea of being 
thwarted in any wish. Every day he sent off 
couriers to Holland, whither Mrs. Fitzherbert had 
retreated, imploring her to return to him, offering 
her formal marriage. At length, as we know, she 
yielded to his importunity and returned. It is 
difficult indeed to realize exactly what was Mrs. 
Fitzherbert’s feeling in the matter. The marriage 
must be, as she knew, illegal, and would lead, as 
Charles James Fox pointed out in his powerful 
letter to the Prince, to endless and intricate diffi¬ 
culties. For the present she could only live with 
him as his mistress. If, when he reached the legal 
age of twenty-five, he were to apply to Parliament 
for permission to marry her, how could permission 
be given, when she had been living with him ir¬ 
regularly? Doubtless, she was flattered by the 
attentions of the Heir to the Throne, but, had 
she really returned his passion, she would surely 
have preferred “ any other species of connection 
with His Royal Highness to one leading to so 
much misery and mischief.” Really to under¬ 
stand her marriage, one must look at the portraits 
of her that are extant. That beautiful and silly 
face explains much. One can well fancy such a 
75 


King George the Fourth 


lady being pleased to live after the performance of 
a mock ceremony with a Prince for whom she 
felt no passion. Her view of the matter can only 
have been social, for, in the eyes of the Church, 
she could only live with the Prince as his mistress. 
Society, however, once satisfied that a ceremony 
of some kind had been enacted, never regarded 
her as anything but his wife. The day after Fox, 
inspired by the Prince, had formally denied that 
any ceremony had taken place, “ the knocker of 
her door,” to quote her own complacent phrase, 
“was never still.” The Duchesses of Portland, 
Devonshire and Cumberland were among her 
visitors. 

How much pop-limbo has been talked about the 
Prince’s denial of the marriage! I grant that it 
was highly improper to marry Mrs. Fitzherbert at 
all. But George was always weak and wayward, 
and he did, in his great passion, marry her. That 
he should afterwards deny it officially seems to me 
to have been utterly inevitable. His denial did 
her not the faintest damage, as I have pointed out. 
It was, so to speak, an official quibble, rendered 
necessary by the circumstances of the case. Not 
to have denied the marriage in the House of Com- 
76 


King George the Fourth 


mons would have meant ruin to both of them. 
As months passed, more serious difficulties awaited 
the unhappily wedded pair. What boots it to 
repeat the story of the Prince’s great debts and 
desperation ? It was clear that there \yas but one 
way of getting his head above water, and that was 
to yield to. his father’s wishes and contract a real 
marriage with a foreign princess. Fate was dog¬ 
ging his footsteps relentlessly. Placed as he was, 
George could not but offer to marry as his father 
willed. It is well, also, to remember that George 
was not ruthlessly and suddenly turning his shoul¬ 
der upon Mrs. Fitzherbert. For some time before 
the British plenipotentiary went to fetch him a 
bride from over the waters, his name had been 
associated with that of the beautiful and un¬ 
scrupulous Countess of Jersey. 

Poor George ! Half-married to a woman whom 
he no longer worshipped, compelled to marry a 
woman whom he was to hate at first sight! Surely 
we should not judge a prince harshly. “ Princess 
Caroline very gauche at cards,” “Princess Caro¬ 
line very missish at supper,” are among the entries 
made in his diary by Lord Malmesbury, while he 
was at the little German Court. I can conceive 


77 


King George the Fourth 


no scene more tragic than that of her presentation 
to the Prince, as related by the same nobleman. 
“ I, accordingly to the established etiquette/’ so 
he writes, “introduced the Princess Caroline to 
him. She, very properly, in consequence of my 
saying it was the right mode of proceeding, at¬ 
tempted to kneel to him. He raised her grace¬ 
fully enough, and embraced her, said barely one 
word, turned round, retired to a distant part of 
the apartment, and calling to me, said : ‘ Harris, 
I am not well: pray get me a glass of brandy. ’ ’ ’ 
At dinner that evening, in the presence of her 
betrothed, the Princess was “flippant, rattling, 
affecting wit.” Poor George, I say again ! De¬ 
portment was his ruling passion, and his bride did 
not know how to behave. Vulgarity — hard, im¬ 
placable, German vulgarity — was in everything 
she did to the very day of her death. The mar¬ 
riage was solemnized on Wednesday, April 8th, 
1795, and the royal bridegroom was drunk. 

So soon as they were separated, George became 
implected with a morbid hatred for his wife, which 
was hardly in accord with his light and variant 
nature and shows how bitterly he had been mor¬ 
tified by his marriage of necessity. It is sad that 
78 


King George the Fourth 


so much of his life should have been wasted in 
futile strainings after divorce. Yet we can scarcely 
blame him for seizing upon every scrap of scandal 
that was whispered of his wife. Besides his not 
unnatural wish to be free, it was derogatory to the 
dignity of a Prince and a Regent that his wife 
should be living an eccentric life at Blackheath 
with a family of singers named Sapio. Indeed, 
Caroline’s conduct during this time was as indis¬ 
creet as ever. Wherever she went she made ribald 
jokes about her husband, “ in such a voice that all, 
by-standing, might hear. ” “ After dinner, ’ ’ writes 
one of her servants, “ Her Royal Highness made 
a wax figure as usual, and gave it an amiable pair 
of large horns; then took three pins out of her 
garment and stuck them through and through, and 
put the figure to roast and melt at the fire. What 
a silly piece of spite ! Yet it is impossible not to 
laugh when one sees it done. ’ ’ Imagine the feel¬ 
ings of the First Gentleman in Europe when the 
unseemly story of these pranks was whispered to 
him! 

For my own part, I fancy Caroline was inno¬ 
cent of any infidelity to her unhappy husband. 
But that is neither here nor there. Her behavior 


79 


King George the Fourth 


was certainly not above suspicion. It fully justi¬ 
fied George in trying to establish a case for her 
divorce. When, at length, she went abroad, her 
vagaries were such that the whole of her English 
suite left her, and we hear of her travelling about 
the Holy Land attended by another family, named 
Bergami. When her husband succeeded to the 
throne, and her name was struck out of the lit¬ 
urgy, she despatched expostulations in absurd 
English to Lord Liverpool. Receiving no an¬ 
swer, she decided to return and claim her right 
to be crowned Queen of England. Whatever the 
unhappy lady did, she always was ridiculous. 
One cannot but smile as one reads of her post¬ 
ing along the French roads in a yellow travelling 
chariot drawn by cart-horses, with a retinue that 
included an alderman, a reclaimed lady-in-wait¬ 
ing, an Italian Count, the eldest son of the aider- 
man, and “ a fine little female child, about three 
years old, whom Her Majesty, in conformity with 
her benevolent practices on former occasions, had 
adopted.” The breakdown of her impeachment, 
and her acceptance of an income formed a fitting 
anti-climax to the terrible absurdities of her posi¬ 
tion. She died from the effects of a chill caught 
So 


King George the Fourth 

when she was trying vainly to force a way to her 
husband’s coronation. Unhappy woman! Our 
sympathy for her is not misgiven. Fate wrote her 
a most tremendous tragedy, and she played it in 
tights. Let us pity her, but not forget to pity her 
husband, the King, also. 

It is another common accusation against George 
that he was an undutiful and unfeeling son. If 
this was so, it is certain that not all the blame is 
to be laid upon him alone. There is more than 
one anecdote which shows that King George dis¬ 
liked his eldest son, and took no trouble to con¬ 
ceal his dislike, long before the boy had been 
freed from his tutors. It was the coldness of his 
father and the petty restrictions he loved to en¬ 
force that first drove George to seek the compan¬ 
ionship of such men as Egalite and the Duke of 
Cumberland, both of whom were quick to inflame 
his impressionable mind to angry resentment. 
Yet, when Margaret Nicholson attempted the life 
of the King, the Prince immediately posted off 
from Brighton that he might wait upon his father 
at Windsor—a graceful act of piety that was re¬ 
warded by his father’s refusal to see him. Hated 
by the Queen, who at this time did all she could 
81 


King George the Fourth 


to keep her husband and his son apart, surrounded 
by intriguers, who did all they could to set him 
against his father, George seems to have behaved 
with great discretion. In the years that follow, 
I can perceive no position more difficult than that 
in which he found himself every time his father 
relapsed into lunacy. That he should have by 
every means opposed those who through jealousy 
stood between him and the regency was only nat¬ 
ural. It cannot be said that at any time did he 
show anxiety to rule, so long as there was any im¬ 
mediate chance of the King’s recovery. On the 
contrary, all impartial seers of that chaotic Court 
agreed that the Prince bore himself throughout the 
intrigues, wherein he himself was bound to be, in 
a notably filial way. 

There are many things that I regret in the 
career of George IV., and what I most of all re¬ 
gret is the part that he played in the politics of the 
period. Englishmen to-day have at length de¬ 
cided that royalty shall not set foot in the political 
arena. I do not despair that some day we shall 
place politics upon a sound commercial basis, as 
they have already done in America and France, or 
leave them entirely in the hands of the police, as 
82 


King George the Fourth 


they do in Russia. It is horrible to think that, 
under our existing regime , all the men of noblest 
blood and highest intellect should waste their time 
in the sordid atmosphere of the House of Com¬ 
mons, listening for hours to nonentities talking 
nonsense, or searching enormous volumes to prove 
that somebody said something some years ago that 
does not quite tally with something he said the 
other day, or standing tremulous before the whips 
in the lobbies and the scorpions in the constituen¬ 
cies. In the political machine are crushed and 
lost all our best men. That Mr. Gladstone did 
not choose to be a cardinal is a blow under which 
the Roman Catholic Church still staggers. In Mr. 
Chamberlain Scotland Yard missed its smartest 
detective. What a fine voluptuary might Lord 
Rosebery have been ! It is a platitude that the 
country is ruled best by the permanent officials, 
and I look forward to the time when Mr. Keir 
Hardie shall hang his cap in the hall of No. io 
Downing Street, and a Conservative workingman 
shall lead Her Majesty’s Opposition. In the life¬ 
time of George, politics were not a whit finer than 
they are to-day. I feel a genuine indignation that 
he should have wasted so much of tissue in mean 

83 


King George the Fourth 

intrigues about ministries and bills. That he 
should have been fascinated by that splendid fel¬ 
low, Fox, is quite right. That he should have 
thrown himself with all his heart into the storm of 
the Westminster election is most natural. But it is 
awful inverideed to find him, long after he had 
reached man’s estate, indulging in back-stair in¬ 
trigues with Whigs and Tories. It is, of course, 
absurd to charge him with deserting his first 
friends, the Whigs. His love and fidelity were 
given, not to the Whigs, but to the men who led 
them. Even after the death of Fox, he did, in 
misplaced piety, do all he could for Fox’s party. 
What wonder that, when he found he was ignored 
by the Ministry that owed its existence to him, he 
turned his back upon that sombre couple, the 
“ Lords G. and G.,” whom he had always hated, 
and went over to the Tories ? Among the Tories 
he hoped to find men who would faithfully per¬ 
form their duties and leave him leisure to live his 
own beautiful life. I regret immensely that his 
part in politics did not cease here. The state of 
the country and of his own finances, and also, I 
fear, a certain love that he had imbibed for politi¬ 
cal manipulation, prevented him from standing 
84 


King George the Fourth 


aside. How useless was all the finesse he dis¬ 
played in the long - drawn question of Catholic 
Emancipation! How lamentable his terror of 
Lord Wellesley’s rude dragooning ! And is there 
not something pitiable in the thought of the Re¬ 
gent at a time of ministerial complications lying 
prone on his bed with a sprained ankle, and tak¬ 
ing, as was whispered, in one day as many as seven 
hundred drops of laudanum ? Some said he took 
these doses to deaden the pain. But others, and 
among them his brother Cumberland, declared 
that the sprain was all a sham. I hope it was. 
The thought of a voluptuary in pain is very ter¬ 
rible. In any case, I cannot but feel angry, for 
George’s own sake and that of his kingdom, that 
he found it impossible to keep further aloof from 
the wearisome troubles of political life. His 
wretched indecision of character made him an 
easy prey to unscrupulous ministers, while his ex¬ 
traordinary diplomatic powers and almost extrava¬ 
gant tact made them, in their turn, an easy prey 
to him. In these two processes much of his genius 
was spent untimely. I must confess that he did 
not quite realize where his duties ended. He 
wished always to do too much. If you read his 
85 


King George the Fourth 


repeated appeals to his father that he might be 
permitted to serve actively in the British Army 
against the French, you will acknowledge that it 
was through no fault of his own that he did not 
fight. It touches me to think that in his declin¬ 
ing years he actually thought that he had led one 
of the charges at Waterloo. He would often de¬ 
scribe the whole scene as it appeared to him at 
that supreme moment, and refer to the Duke of 
Wellington, saying, “Was it not so, Duke?” 
“ I have often heard you say so, your Majesty,” 
the old soldier would reply, grimly. I am not 
sure that the old soldier was at Waterloo himself. 
In a room full of people he once referred to the 
battle as having been won upon the playing-fields 
of Eton. This was certainly a most unfortunate 
slip, seeing that all historians are agreed that it 
was fought on a certain field situate a few miles 
from Brussels. 

In one of his letters to the King, craving for a 
military appointment, George urges that, whilst 
his next brother, the Duke of York, commanded 
the army, and the younger branches of the family 
were either generals or lieutenant-generals, he, 
who was Prince of Wales, remained colonel of 
86 


King George the Fourth 


dragoons. And herein, could he have known it, 
lay the right limitation of his life. As royalty 
was and is constituted, it is for the younger sons 
to take an active part in the services, whilst the 
eldest son is left as the ruler of Society. Thou¬ 
sands and thousands of guineas were given by the 
nation that the Prince of Wales, the Regent, the 
King, might be, in the best sense of the word, or¬ 
namental. It is not for us, at this moment, to 
consider whether Royalty, as a wholly Pagan in¬ 
stitution, is not out of place in a community of 
Christians. It is enough that we should inquire 
whether the god, whom our grandfathers set up 
and worshipped and crowned with offerings, gave 
grace to his worshippers. 

That George was a moral man, in our modern 
sense, I do not for one moment pretend. It were 
idle to deny that he was profligate. When he 
died there were found in one of his cabinets more 
than a hundred locks of women’s hair. Some of 
these were still plastered with powder and poma¬ 
tum, some were mere little golden curls, such as 
grow low down upon a girl’s neck, others were 
streaked with gray. The whole of this collection 
subsequently passed into the hands of Adam, the 

87 


King George the Fourth 


famous Scotch henchman of the Regent. In his 
family, now resident in Glasgow, it is treasured as 
an heirloom. I myself have been privileged to look 
at all these locks of hair, and I have seen a clair¬ 
voyants take them one by one, and, pinching them 
between her lithe fingers, tell of the love that each 
symbolized. I have heard her tell of long rides 
by night, of a boudoir hung with grass-green 
satin, and of a tryst at Windsor; of one, the wife 
of a hussar at York, whose little lap-dog used to 
bark angrily whenever the Regent came near his 
mistress; of a milkmaid who, in her great simple¬ 
ness, thought her child would one day be king 
of England; of an arch-duchess with blue eyes, 
and a silly little flautist from Portugal; of women 
that were wantons and fought for his favor, great 
ladies that he loved dearly, girls that gave them¬ 
selves to him humbly. If we lay all pleasures at 
the feet of our prince, we can scarcely hope he 
will remain virtuous. Indeed, we do not wish 
our prince to be an examplar of godliness, but a 
perfect type of happiness. It may be foolish of us 
to insist upon apolaustic happiness, but that is the 
kind of happiness that we can ourselves, most of 
us, best understand, and so we offer it to our 
88 


King George the Fourth 

ideal. In Royalty we find our Bacchus, our 
Venus. 

Certainly George was, in the practical sense of 
the word, a fine king. His wonderful physique, 
his wealth, his brilliant talents, he gave them all 
without stint to Society. From the time when, 
at Madame Comely’s, he gallivanted with rips 
and demirips, to the time when he sat, a stout 
and solitary old king, fishing in the artificial pond 
at Windsor, his life was beautifully ordered. He 
indulged to the full in all the delights that Eng¬ 
land could offer him. That he should have, in 
his old age, suddenly abandoned his career of 
vigorous enjoyment is, I confess, rather surprising. 
The royal voluptuary generally remains young to 
the last. No one ever tires of pleasure. It is the 
pursuit of pleasure, the trouble to grasp it, that 
makes us old. Only the soldiers who enter 
Capua with wounded feet leave it demoralized. 
And yet George, who never had to wait or fight 
for a pleasure, fell enervate long before his death. 
I can but attribute this to the constant persecution 
to which he was subjected by duns and ministers, 
parents and wives. 

Not that I regret the manner in which he spent 
89 


King George the Fourth 


his last years. On the contrary, I think it was 
exceedingly cosy. I like to think of the King, 
at Windsor, lying a-bed all the morning in his 
darkened room, with all the sporting papers scat¬ 
tered over his quilt and a little decanter of the 
favorite cherry-brandy within easy reach. I like 
to think of him sitting by his fire in the afternoon 
and hearing his ministers ask for him at the door 
and piling another log upon the fire, as he heard 
them sent away by his servant. It was not, I ac¬ 
knowledge, a life to kindle popular enthusiasm. 
But most people knew little of its mode. For all 
they knew, His Majesty might have been mak¬ 
ing his soul or writing his memoirs. In reality, 
George was now “too'fat by far” to brook the 
observation of casual eyes. Especially he hated 
to be seen by those whose memories might bear 
them back to the time when he had yet a waist. 
Among his elaborate precautions of privacy was a 
pair of avant-couriers, who always preceded his 
pony-chaise in its daily progress through Windsor 
Great Park and had strict commands to drive 
back any intruder. In The Veiled Majestic Man , 
Where is the Graceful Despot of England ? and 
other lampoons not extant, the scribblers mocked 


90 


King George the Fourth 

his loneliness. At White’s, one evening, four 
gentlemen of high fashion vowed, over their wine, 
they would see the invisible monarch. So they 
rode down next day to Windsor, and secreted 
themselves in the branches of a holm-oak. Here 
they waited perdus , beguiling the hours and the 
frost with their flasks. When dusk was falling, 
they heard at last the chime of hoofs on the hard 
road, and saw presently a splash of the Royal 
livery, as two grooms trotted by, peering warily 
from side to side, and disappeared in the gloom. 
The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till 
they caught the distant sound of wheels. Nearer 
and louder came the sound, and soon they saw a 
white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girth 
immensurate among the cushions, a weary mon¬ 
arch, whose face, crimson above the dark accumu¬ 
lation of his stock, was like some ominous sunset. 
... He had passed them and they had seen 
him, monstrous and moribund among the cushions. 
He had been borne past them like a wounded Bac¬ 
chanal. The King! The Regent! . . . They 

shuddered in the frosty branches. The night was 
gathering and they climbed silently to the ground, 
with an awful, indispellible image before their eyes. 


91 


King George the Fourth 

You see, these gentlemen were not philosophers. 
Remember, also, that the strangeness of their es¬ 
capade, the cramped attitude they had been 
compelled to maintain in the branches of the 
holm-oak, the intense cold and their frequent 
resort to the flask must have all conspired to ex¬ 
aggerate their emotions and prevent them from 
looking at things in a rational way. After all, 
George had lived his life. He had lived more 
fully than any other man. And it was better 
really that his death should be preceded by de¬ 
cline. For every one, obviously, the most desir¬ 
able kind of death is that which strikes men down, 
suddenly, in their prime. Had they not been so 
dangerous, railways would never have ousted the 
old coaches from popular favor. But, however 
keenly we may court such a death for ourselves or 
for those that are near and dear to us, we must 
always be offended whenever it befall one in whom 
our interest is aesthetic merely. Had his father 
permitted George to fight at Waterloo, and had 
some fatal bullet pierced the padding of that 
splendid breast, I should have been really an¬ 
noyed, and this essay would never have been 
written. Sudden death mars the unity of an ad- 
92 


King George the Fourth 

mirable life. Natural decline, tapering to tran¬ 
quillity, is its proper end. As a man’s life begins, 
faintly, and gives no token of childhood’s in¬ 
tensity and the expansion of youth and the per¬ 
fection of manhood, so it should also end, faintly. 
The King died a death that was like the calm 
conclusion of a great, lurid poem. Quievit. 

Yes, his life was a poem, a poem in the praise 
of Pleasure. And it is right that we should think 
of him always as the great voluptuary. Only let 
us note that his nature never became, as do the 
natures of most voluptuaries, corroded by a cruel 
indifference to the happiness of others. When all 
the town was agog for the fete to be given by the 
Regent in honor of the French King, Sheridan 
sent a forged card of invitation to Romeo Coates, 
the half-witted dandy, who used at this time to 
walk about in absurd ribbons and buckles, and 
was the butt of all the streetsters. The poor fel¬ 
low arrived at the entrance of Carlton House, 
proud as a peacock, and he was greeted with a 
tremendous cheer from the bystanding mob, but 
when he came to the lacqueys he was told that his 
card was a hoax and sent about his business. The 
tears were rolling down his cheeks as he shambled 


93 


King George the Fourth 


back into the street. The Regent heard later in 
the evening of this sorry joke, and next day de¬ 
spatched a kindly-worded message, in which he 
prayed that Mr. Coates would not refuse to 
come and “view the decorations, nevertheless.” 
Though he does not appear to have treated his 
inferiors with the extreme servility that is now in 
vogue, George was beloved by the whole of his 
household, and many are the little tales that are 
told to illustrate the kindliness and consideration 
he showed to his valets and his jockeys and his 
stable-boys. That from time to time he dropped 
certain of his favorites is no cause for blaming 
him. Remember that a Great Personage, like a 
great genius, is dangerous to his fellow-creatures. 
The favorites of Royalty live in an intoxicant at¬ 
mosphere. They become unaccountable for their 
behavior. Either they get beyond themselves, 
and, like Brummell, forget that the King, their 
friend, is also their master, or they outrun the 
constable and go bankrupt, or cheat at cards in 
order to keep up their position, or do some other 
foolish thing that makes it impossible for the 
King to favor them more. Old friends are gen¬ 
erally the refuge of unsociable persons. Remem- 


94 


King George the Fourth 


bering this also, gauge the temptation that besets 
the very leader of society to form fresh friend¬ 
ships, when all the cleverest and most charming 
persons in the land are standing ready, like supers 
at the wings, to come on and please him ! At 
Carlton House there was a constant succession of 
wits. Minds were preserved for the Prince of 
Wales, as coverts are preserved for him to-day. 
For him Sheridan would flash his best bon-mot, 
and Theodore Hook play his most practical joke, 
his swiftest chansonette. And Fox would talk, as 
only he could, of Liberty and of Patriotism, and 
Byron would look more than ever like Isidore de 
Lara as he recited his own bad verses, and Sir 
Walter Scott would “pour out with an endless 
generosity his store of old-world learning, kind¬ 
ness, and humor.” Of such men George was a 
splendid patron. He did not merely sit in his 
chair, gaping princely at their wit and their wis¬ 
dom, but quoted with the scholars and argued 
with the statesmen and jested with the wits. 
Doctor Burney, an impartial observer, says that 
he was amazed by the knowledge of music that 
the Regent displayed in a half-hour’s discussion 
over the wine. Croker says that “ the Prince and 
95 


King George the Fourth 


Scott were the two most brilliant story-tellers, in 
their several ways, he had ever happened to meet. 
Both exerted themselves, and it was hard to say 
which shone the most. ’ ’ Indeed His Royal High¬ 
ness appears to have been a fine conversationalist, 
with a wide range of knowledge and great humor. 
We, who have come at length to look upon stu¬ 
pidity as one of the most sacred prerogatives of 
Royalty, can scarcely realize that, if George’s 
birth had been never so humble, he would have 
been known to us as a most admirable scholar and 
wit, or as a connoisseur of the arts. It is pleasing 
to think of his love for the Flemish school of 
painting, for Wilkie and Sir Thomas Lawrence. 
The splendid portraits of foreign potentates that 
hang in the Banqueting Room at Windsor bear 
witness to his sense of the canvas. In his later 
years he exerted himself strenuously in raising the 
tone of the drama. His love of the classics never 
left him. We know he was fond of quoting those 
incomparable poets, Homer, at great length, and 
that he was prominent in the “ papyrus-craze.” 
Indeed, he inspired Society with a love of some¬ 
thing more than mere pleasure, a love of the 
“humaner delights.” He was a giver of tone. 

96 


King George the Fourth 


At his coming, the bluff, disgusting ways of the 
Tom and Jerry period gave way to those florid 
graces that are still called Georgian. 

A pity that George’s predecessor was not a 
man, like the Prince Consort, of strong chasten¬ 
ing influence! Then might the bright flamboy¬ 
ance which he gave to Society have made his 
reign more beautiful than any other—a real re¬ 
naissance. But he found London a wild city of 
taverns and cock-pits, and the grace which in the 
course of years he gave to his subjects never really 
entered into them. The cock-pits were gilded 
and the taverns painted with color, but the heart 
of the city was vulgar, even as before. The sim¬ 
ulation of higher things did indeed give the note 
of a very interesting period, but how shallow 
that simulation was and how merely it was due to 
George’s own influence, we may see in the light 
of what happened after his death. The good that 
he had done died with him. The refinement he 
had laid upon vulgarity fell away, like enamel 
from withered cheeks. It was only George himself 
who had made the sham endure. The Victorian 
Era came soon, and the angels rushed in and drove 
the nymphs away and hung the land with reps. 


97 


King George the Fourth 

I have often wondered whether it was with a 
feeling that his influence would be no more than 
life-long, that George allowed Carlton House, that 
dear structure, the very work of his life and sym¬ 
bol of his being, to be razed. I wish that Carlton 
House were still standing. I wish we could still 
walk through those corridors, whose walls were 
“crusted with ormolu,” and parquet-floors were 
“so glossy that, were Narcissus to come down 
from heaven, he would, I maintain, need no other 
mirror for his beaute . ” I wish that we could see 
the pier-glasses and the girandoles and the twist¬ 
ed sofas, the fauns foisted upon the ceiling and the 
rident goddesses along the wall. These things 
would make George’s memory dearer to us, help 
us to a fuller knowledge of him. I am glad that 
the Pavilion still stands here in Brighton. Its 
trite lawns and wanton cupolae have taught me 
much. As I write this essay, I can see them from 
my window. Last night, in a crowd of trippers 
and townspeople, I roamed the lawns of that dis¬ 
honored palace, whilst a band played us tunes. 
Once I fancied I saw the shade of a swaying figure 
and of a wine-red face. 


& Brighton, 1894. 


98 


The Pervasion of Rouge 



The Pervasion of Rouge 


Nay, but it is useless to protest. Artifice must 
queen it once more in the town, and so, if there 
be any whose hearts chafe at her return, let them 
not say, “ We have come into evil times,” and be 
all for resistance, reformation, or angry cavilling. 
For did the king’s sceptre send the sea retrograde, 
or the wand of the sorcerer avail to turn the sun 
from its old course? And what man or what 
number of men ever stayed that inexorable pro¬ 
cess by which the cities of this world grow, are 
very strong, fail, and grow again? Indeed, in¬ 
deed, there is charm in every period, and only 
fools and flutterpates do not seek reverently for what 
is charming in their own day. No martyrdom, 
however fine, nor satire, however splendidly bit¬ 
ter, has changed by a little tittle the known ten¬ 
dency of things. It is the times that can perfect 
us, not we the times, and so let all of us wisely 


IOI 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


acquiesce. Like the little wired marionettes, let 
us acquiesce in the dance. 

For behold ! The Victorian era comes to its 
end and the day of sancta simplicitas is quite 
ended. The old signs are here and the portents 
to warn the seer of life that we are ripe for a new 
epoch of artifice. Are not men rattling the dice- 
box and ladies dipping their fingers in the rouge- 
pot ? At Rome, in the keenest time of her de- 
gringolade, when there was gambling even in the 
holy temples, great ladies (does not Lucian tell 
us ?) did not scruple to squander all they had upon 
unguents from Arabia. Nero’s mistress and un¬ 
happy wife, Poppaea, of shameful memory, had in 
her travelling retinue fifteen—or, as some say, 
fifty—she-asses, for the sake of their milk, that 
was thought an incomparable guard against cos¬ 
metics with poison in them. Last century, too, 
when life was lived by candle-light, and ethics 
was but etiquette, and even art a question of 
punctilio, women, we know, gave the best hours 
of the day to the crafty farding of their faces 
and the towering of their coiffures. And men, 
throwing passion into the wine-bowl to sink or 
swim, turned out thought to browse upon the 


102 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

green cloth. Cannot we even now in our fancy 
see them, those silent exquisites round the long 
table at Brooks’s, masked, all of them, “ lest the 
countenance should betray feeling,” in quinze 
masks, through whose eyelets they sat peeping, 
peeping, while macao brought them riches or 
ruin ! We can see them, those silent rascals, sit¬ 
ting there with their cards and their rouleaux and 
their wooden money-bowls, long after the dawn 
had crept up St. James’s and pressed its haggard 
face against the window of the little club. Yes, 
we can raise their ghosts—and, more, we can see 
manywhere a devotion to hazard fully as meek as 
theirs. In England there has been a wonderful 
revival of cards. Baccarat may rival dead faro in 
the tale of her devotees. We have all seen the 
sweet English chatelaine at her roulette wheel, and 
ere long it may be that tender parents will be 
writing to complain of the compulsory baccarat in 
our public schools. 

In fact, we are all gamblers once more, but our 
gambling is on a finer scale than ever it was. We 
fly from the card-room to the heath, and from the 
heath to the City, and from the City to the coast 
of the Mediterranean. And just as no one seri- 


103 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


ously encourages the clergy in its frantic efforts to 
lay the spirit of chance that has thus resurged 
among us, so no longer are many faces set against 
that other great sign of a more complicated life, 
the love for cosmetics. No longer is a lady of 
fashion blamed if, to escape the outrageous perse¬ 
cution of time, she fly for sanctuary to the toilet- 
table ; and if a damosel, prying in her mirror, be 
sure that with brush and pigment she can trick 
herself into more charm, we are not angry. In¬ 
deed, why should we ever have been ? Surely it 
is laudable, this wish to make fair the ugly and 
overtop fairness, and no wonder that within the 
last five years the trade of the makers of cosmetics 
has increased immoderately — twentyfold, so one 
of these makers has said to me. We need but 
walk down any modish street and peer into the 
little broughams that flit past, or (in Thackeray’s 
phrase) under the bonnet of any woman we meet, 
to see over how wide a kingdom rouge reigns. 

And now that the use of pigments is becoming 
general, and most women are not so young as they 
are painted, it may be asked curiously how the 
prejudice ever came into being. Indeed, it is 
hard to trace folly, for that it is inconsequent, to 


104 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

its start; and perhaps it savors too much of rea¬ 
son to suggest that the prejudice was due to the 
tristful confusion man has made of soul and sur¬ 
face. Through trusting so keenly to the detection 
of the one by keeping watch upon the other, and 
by force of the thousand errors following, he has 
come to think of surface even as the reverse of 
soul. He seems to suppose that every clown be¬ 
neath his paint and lip - salve is moribund and 
knows it (though in verity, I am told, clowns are 
as cheerful a class of men as any other), that the 
fairer the fruit’s rind and the more delectable its 
bloom, the closer are packed the ashes within it. 
The very jargon of the hunting-field connects cun¬ 
ning with a mask. And so perhaps came men’s 
anger at the embellishment of women—that lovely 
mask of enamel with its shadows of pink and tiny 
pencilled veins, what must lurk behind it ? Of 
what treacherous mysteries may it not be the 
screen ? Does not the heathen lacquer her dark 
face, and the harlot paint her cheeks, because sor¬ 
row has made them pale ? 

After all, the old prejudice is a-dying. We 
need not pry into the secret of its birth. Rather 
is this a time of jolliness and glad indulgence. 


105 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


For the era of rouge is upon us, and as only in an 
elaborate era can man, by the tangled accrescency 
of his own pleasures and emotions, reach that re¬ 
finement which is his highest excellence, and by 
making himself, so to say, independent of Nature, 
come nearest to God, so only in an elaborate era 
is woman perfect. Artifice is the strength of the 
world, and in that same mask of paint and pow¬ 
der, shadowed with vermeil tinct and most trimly 
pencilled, is woman’s strength. 

For see ! We need not look so far back to see 
woman under the direct influence of Nature. 
Early in this century, our grandmothers, sickening 
of the odor of faded exotics and spilt wine, came 
out into the daylight once more and let the 
breezes blow around their faces and enter, sharp 
and welcome, into their lungs. Artifice they 
drove forth and they set Martin Tupper upon a 
throne of mahogany to rule over them. A very 
reign of terror set in. All things were sacrificed 
to the fetish Nature. Old ladies may still be 
heard to tell how, when they were girls, affecta¬ 
tion was not; and, if we verify their assertion in 
the light of such literary authorities as Dickens, 
we find that it is absolutely true. Women appear 
106 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


to have been in those days utterly natural in their 
conduct—flighty, fainting, blushing, gushing, gig¬ 
gling, and shaking their curls. They knew no 
reserve in the first days of the Victorian Era. No 
thought was held too trivial, no emotion too 
silly, to express. To Nature everything was sacri¬ 
ficed. Great heavens ! And in those barren days 
what influence did women exert! By men they 
seem not to have been feared nor loved, but re¬ 
garded rather as “dear little creatures” or 
“wonderful little beings,” and in their relation 
to life as foolish and ineffectual as the landscapes 
they did in water-color. Yet, if the women of 
those years were of no great account, they had a 
certain charm, and they at least had not begun to 
trespass upon men’s ground ; if they touched not 
thought, which is theirs by right, at any rate they 
refrained from action, which is ours. Far more 
serious was it when, in the natural trend of time, 
they became enamoured of rinking and archery 
and galloping along the Brighton Parade. Swiftly 
they have sped on since then from horror to horror. 
The invasion of the tennis-courts and of the golf- 
links, the seizure of the bicycle and of the type¬ 
writer, were but steps preliminary in that cam- 


107 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


paign which is to end with the final victorious 
occupation of St. Stephen’s. But stay ! The hor¬ 
rific pioneers of womanhood who gad hither and 
thither and, confounding wisdom with the device 
on her shield, shriek for the unbecoming, are 
doomed. Though they spin their bicycle-treadles 
so amazingly fast, they are too late. Though they 
scream victory, none follow them. Artifice, that 
fair exile, has returned. 

Yes, though the pioneers know it not, they are 
doomed already. For of the curiosities of history 
not the least strange is the manner in which two 
social movements may be seen to overlap, long 
after the second has, in truth, given its deathblow 
to the first. And, in like manner, as one has 
seen the limbs of a murdered thing in lively 
movement, so we need not doubt that, though the 
voices of those who cry out for reform be very ter¬ 
ribly shrill, they will soon be hushed. Dear 
Artifice is with us. It needed but that we should 
wait. 

Surely, without any of my pleading, women 
will welcome their great and amiable protectrix, 
as by instinct. For (have I not said it ?) it is 
upon her that all their strength, their life almost, 
108 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


depends. Artifice’s first command to them is that 
they should repose. With bodily activity their 
powder will fly, their enamel crack. They are 
butterflies who must not flit, if they love their 
bloom. Now, setting aside the point of view of 
passion, from which very many obvious things 
might be said (and probably have been by the 
minor poets), it is, from the intellectual point of 
view, quite necessary that a woman should repose. 
Hers is the resupinate sex. On her couch she is a 
goddess, but so soon as ever she put her foot to 
the ground—lo, she is the veriest little sillypop, 
and quite done for. She cannot rival us in action, 
but she is our mistress in the things of the mind. 
Let her not by second-rate athletics, nor indeed by 
any exercise soever of the limbs, spoil the pretty 
procedure of her reason. Let her be content to 
remain the guide, the subtle suggester of what we 
must do, the strategist whose soldiers we are, the 
little architect whose workmen. 

‘‘ After all, ” as a pretty girl once said to me, 
“women are a sex by themselves, so to speak,” 
and the sharper the line between their worldly 
functions and ours, the better. This greater swift¬ 
ness and less erring subtlety of mind, their forte 
109 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


and privilege, justifies the painted mask that Arti¬ 
fice bids them wear. Behind it their minds can 
play without let. They gain the strength of re¬ 
serve. They become important, as in the days of 
the Roman Empire were the Emperor’s mistresses, 
as was the Pompadour at Versailles, as was our 
Elizabeth. Yet do not their faces become lined 
with thought ; beautiful and without meaning are 
their faces. 

And, truly, of all the good things that will hap¬ 
pen with the full revival of cosmetics, one of 
the best is that surface will finally be severed 
from soul. That damnable confusion will be 
solved by the extinguishing of a prejudice which, 
as I suggest, itself created. Too long has the face 
been degraded from its rank as a thing of beauty 
to a mere vulgar index of character or emotion. 
We had come to troubling ourselves, not with its 
charm of color and line, but with such questions 
as whether the lips were sensuous, the eyes full of 
sadness, the nose indicative of determination. I 
have no quarrel with physiognomy. For my own 
part I believe in it. But it has tended to degrade 
the face aesthetically, in such wise as the study of 
cheirosophy has tended to degrade the hand. And 


no 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

the use of cosmetics, the masking of the face, will 
change this. We shall gaze at a woman merely 
because she is beautiful, not stare into her face 
anxiously, as into the face of a barometer. 

How fatal it has been, in how many ways, this 
confusion of soul and service ! Wise were the 
Greeks in making plain masks for their mummers 
to play in, and dunces we not to have done the 
same ! Only the other day, an actress was saying 
that what she was most proud of in her art— 
next, of course, to having appeared in some pro¬ 
vincial pantomime at the age of three—was the 
deftness with which she contrived, in parts de¬ 
manding a rapid succession of emotions, to dab her 
cheeks quite quickly with rouge from the palm of 
her right hand or powder from the palm of her 
left. Gracious goodness! why do not we have 
masks upon the stage ? Drama is the presentment 
of the soul in action. The mirror of the soul is 
the voice. Let the young critics, who seek a 
cheap reputation for austerity, by cavilling at 
“incidental music,” set their faces rather against 
the attempt to justify inferior dramatic art by the 
subvention of a quite alien art like painting, of 
any art, indeed, whose sphere is only surface. 


iii 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

Let those, again, who sneer, so rightly, at the 
“painted anecdotes of the Academy,” censure 
equally the writers who trespass on painters’ 
ground. It is a proclaimed sin that a painter 
should concern himself with a good little girl’s 
affection for a Scotch greyhound, or the keen en¬ 
joyment of their port by elderly gentlemen of the 
early ’forties. Yet, for a painter to prod the soul 
with his paint-brush is no worse than for a novelist 
to refuse to dip under the surface, and the fashion 
of avoiding a psychological study of grief by 
stating that the owner’s hair turned white in a 
single night, or of shame by mentioning a sudden 
rush of scarlet to the cheeks, is as lamentable as 
may be. But! But with the useful use of cos¬ 
metics and the consequent secernment of soul and 
surface, upon which at the risk of irritating a 
reader, I must again insist, all those old properties 
that went to bolster up the ordinary novel—the 
trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined 
curve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the 
mustache, aye and the hectic spot of red on 
either cheek—will be made spiflicate, as the pup¬ 
pets were spiflicated by Don Quixote. Yes, even 
now Demos begins to discern. The same spirit 


112 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


that has revived rouge, smote his mouth as it 
grinned at the wondrous painter of mist and river, 
and now sends him sprawling for the pearls that 
Meredith dived for in the deep waters of romance. 

Indeed the revival of cosmetics must needs be so 
splendid an influence, conjuring boons innumer¬ 
able, that one inclines almost to mutter against 
that inexorable law by which Artifice must perish 
from time to time. That such branches of paint¬ 
ing as the staining of glass or the illuminating of 
manuscripts should fall into disuse seems, in com¬ 
parison, so likely; these were esoteric arts ; they 
died with the monastic spirit. But personal ap¬ 
pearance is art’s very basis. The painting of the 
face is the first kind of painting men can have 
known. To make beautiful things—is it not an 
impulse laid upon few? But to make oneself 
beautiful is an universal instinct. Strange that the 
resultant art could ever perish ! So fascinating 
an art too ! So various in its materials from stim- 
mis, psimythium, and fuligo to bismuth and ar¬ 
senic, so simple in that its ground and its subject- 
matter are one, so marvellous in that its very sub¬ 
ject-matter becomes lovely when an artist has 
selected it! For surely this is no idle nor fantastic 
IX 3 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


saying. To deny that “ making up ” is an art, on 
the pretext that the finished work of its exponents 
depends for beauty and excellence upon the ground 
chosen for the work, is absurd. At the touch of 
a true artist, the plainest face turns comely. As 
subject-matter the face is no more than suggest¬ 
ive, as ground, merely a loom round which the 
beatus artifex may spin the threads of any golden 
fabric: 

“ Qua nunc nomen habent operosi signa Maronis 
Pondus iners quondam duraque massa fuit. 

Multa viros nescire decet; pat's maxima rerum 
Offendat , si non interior a tegas 

and, as Ovid would seem to suggest, by pigments 
any tone may be set aglow on a woman’s cheek, 
from enamel the features take any form. Inso¬ 
much that surely the advocates of soup-kitchens 
and free-libraries and other devices for giving peo¬ 
ple what Providence did not mean them to re¬ 
ceive, should send out pamphlets in the praise of 
self-embellishment. For it will place Beauty with¬ 
in easy reach of many who could not otherwise 
hope to attain to it. 

But of course Artifice is rather exacting. In 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


return for the repose she forces—so wisely !— 
upon her followers when the sun is high or the 
moon is blown across heaven, she demands that 
they should pay her long homage at the sun’s 
rising. The initiate may not enter lightly upon 
her mysteries. For, if a bad complexion be inex¬ 
cusable, to be ill-painted is unforgivable; and, 
when the toilet is laden once more with the ful¬ 
ness of its elaboration, we shall hear no more 
of the proper occupation for women. And think, 
how sweet an energy, to sit at the mirror of 
coquetry ! See the dear merits of the toilet as 
shown upon old vases, or upon the walls of Roman 
ruins, or, rather still, read Bottiger’s alluring, 
scholarly description of “ Morgenscenen im Putz- 
zimmer Einer Reichen Romerin.” Read of Sa¬ 
bina’s face as she comes through the curtain of 
her bed-chamber to the chamber of her toilet. 
The slave-girls have long been chafing their white 
feet upon the marble floor. They stand, those timid 
Greek girls, marshalled in little battalions. Each 
has her appointed task, and all kneel in welcome 
as Sabina stalks, ugly and frowning, to the toilet 
chair. Scaphion steps forth from among them, 
and, dipping a tiny sponge in a bowl of hot milk, 
IJ 5 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


passes it lightly, ever so lightly, over her mistress’s 
face. The Poppaean pastes melt beneath it like 
snow. A cooling lotion is poured over her brow, 
and is fanned with feathers. Phiale comes after, 
a clever girl, captured in some sea-skirmish on the 
M gean. In her left hand she holds the ivory box 
wherein are the phucus and that white powder, 
psimythium ; in her right a sheaf of slim brushes. 
With how sure a touch does she mingle the colors, 
and in what sweet proportion blushes and blanches 
her lady’s upturned face. Phiale is the cleverest 
of all the slaves. Now Calamis dips her quill in a 
certain powder that floats, liquid and sable, in the 
hollow of her palm. Standing upon tip-toe and 
with lips parted, she traces the arch of the eye¬ 
brows. The slaves whisper loudly of their lady’s 
beauty, and two of them hold up a mirror to her. 
Yes, the eyebrows are rightly arched. But why 
does Psecas abase herself? She is craving leave to 
powder Sabina’s hair with a fine new powder. It 
is made of the grated rind of the cedar-tree, and 
a Gallic perfumer, whose stall is near the Circus, 
gave it to her for a kiss. No lady in Rome knows 
of it. And so, when four special slaves have piled 
up the head-dress, out of a perforated box this 
116 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


glistening powder is showered. Into every little 
brown ringlet it enters, till Sabina’s hair seems 
like a pile of gold coins. Lest the breezes send it 
flying, the girls lay the powder with sprinkled 
attar. Soon Sabina will start for the Temple of 
Cybele. 

Ah ! Such are the lures of the toilet that none 
will for long hold aloof from them. Cosmetics 
are not going to be a mere prosaic remedy for 
age or plainness, but all ladies and all young girls 
will come to love them. Does not a certain blithe 
Marquise, whose lettres intimes from the Court of 
Louis Seize are less read than their wit deserves, 
tell us how she was scandalized to see “ meme les 
toutes jeunes demoiselles emaillees comme ma ta- 
batiere ?" So it shall be with us. Surely the 
common prejudice against painting the lily can 
but be based on mere ground of economy. That 
which is already fair is complete, it may be urged 
—urged implausibly, for there are not so many 
lovely things in this world that we can afford not 
to know each one of them by heart. There is 
only one white lily, and who that has ever seen— 
as I have—a lily really well painted could grudge 
the artist so fair a ground for his skill ? Scarcely 
117 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


do you believe through how many nice meta¬ 
morphoses a lily may be passed by him. In like 
manner, we all know the young girl, with her 
simpleness, her goodness, her wayward ignorance. 
And a very charming ideal for England must she 
have been, and a very natural one, when a young 
girl sat even on the throne. But no nation can 
keep its ideal for ever, and it needed none of Mr. 
Gilbert’s delicate satire in “ Utopia ” to remind us 
that she had passed out of our ken with the rest of 
the early Victorian Era. What writer of plays, 
as lately asked some pressman, who had been told 
off to attend many first nights and knew what he 
was talking about, ever dreams of making the 
young girl the centre of his theme ? Rather he 
seeks inspiration from the tried and tired woman 
of the world, in all her intricate maturity, whilst, 
by way of comic relief, he sends the young girl 
flitting in and out with a tennis-racket, the poor 
eiSoAov afjiavpov of her former self. The season of 
the unsophisticated is gone by, and the young 
girl’s final extinction beneath the rising tides of 
cosmetics will leave no gap in life and will rob 
art of nothing. 

“ Tush,” I can hear some damned flutterpate ex- 
118 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


claim, “girlishness and innocence are as strong 
and as permanent as womanhood itself! Why, a 
few months past, the whole town went mad 
over Miss Cissie Loftus ! Was not hers a success 
of girlish innocence and the absence of rouge ? 
If such things as these be outmoded, why was she 
so wildly popular?” Indeed, the triumph of that 
clever girl, whose debut made London nice even 
in August, is but another witness to the truth of 
my contention. In a very sophisticated time, 
simplicity has a new dulcedo. Hers was a success 
of contrast. Accustomed to clever malaperts like 
Miss Lloyd or Miss Reeve, whose experienced 
pouts and smiles under the sun-bonnet are a stand¬ 
ing burlesque of innocence and girlishness, Demos 
was really delighted, for once and away, to see 
the real presentment of these things upon his 
stage. Coming after all those sly serios, coming 
so young and mere with her pink frock and 
straightly combed hair, Miss Cissie Loftus had 
the charrn^ which things of another period often do 
possess. Besides, just as we adored her for the 
abrupt nod with which she was wont at first to 
acknowledge the applause, so we were glad for her 
to come upon the stage with nothing to tinge the 
119 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

ivory of her cheeks. It seemed so strange, that 
neglect of convention. To be behind footlights and 
not rouged ! Yes, hers was a success of contrast. 
She was like a daisy in the window at Solomon’s. 
She was delightful. And yet, such is the force of 
convention, that when last I saw her, playing in 
some burlesque at the Gaiety, her fringe was 
curled and her pretty face rouged with the best of 
them. And, if further need be to show the ab¬ 
surdity of having called her performance “ a tri¬ 
umph of naturalness over the jaded spirit of 
modernity,” let us reflect that the little mimic 
was not a real old-fashioned girl after all. She 
had none of that restless naturalness that would 
seem to have characterized the girl of the early 
Victorian days. She had no pretty ways—no 
smiles nor blushes nor tremors. Possibly Demos 
could not have stood a presentment of girlish¬ 
ness unrestrained. 

But, with her grave insouciance, Miss Cissie 
Loftus had much of the reserve that is one of the 
factors of feminine perfection, and to most comes 
only, as I have said, with artifice. Her features 
played very, very slightly. And in truth, this 
may have been one of the reasons of her great 


120 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


success. For expression is but too often the ruin 
of a face; and, since we cannot, as yet, so order 
the circumstances of life that women shall never 
be betrayed into “an unbecoming emotion,” 
when the brunette shall never have cause to blush, 
nor La Gioconda to frown, the safest way by far 
is to create, by brush and pigments, artificial ex¬ 
pressions for every face. 

And this—say you?—will make monotony? 
You are mistaken, toto ccelo mistaken. When your 
mistress has wearied you with one expression, then 
it will need but a few touches of that pencil, a 
backward sweep of that brush, and lo, you will be 
revelling in another. For though, of course, the 
painting of the face is, in manner, most like the 
painting of canvas, in outcome it is rather akin to 
the art of music—lasting, like music’s echo, not 
for very long. So that, no doubt, of the many 
little appurtenances of the Reformed Toilet Table, 
not the least vital will be a list of the emotions 
that become its owner, with recipes for simulating 
them. According to the color she wills her hair 
to be for the time—black or yellow or, peradven¬ 
ture, burnished red—she will blush for you, sneer 
for you, laugh or languish for you. The good 
121 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

combinations of line and color are nearly number¬ 
less, and by their means poor restless woman will 
be able to realize her moods in all their shades and 
lights and dappledoms, to live many lives and 
masquerade through many moments of joy. No 
monotony will be. And for us men matrimony 
will have lost its sting. 

But that in the world of women they will not 
neglect this art, so ripping in itself, in its result so 
wonderfully beneficent, I am sure indeed. Much, 
I have said, is already done for its full revival. 
The spirit of the age has made straight the path of 
its professors. Fashion has made Jezebel surrender 
her monopoly of the rouge-pot. As yet, the great 
art of self-embellishment is for us but in its in¬ 
fancy. But if Englishwomen can bring it to the 
flower of an excellence so supreme as never yet has 
it known, then, though Old England lose her 
martial and commercial supremacy, we patriots 
will have the satisfaction of knowing that she has 
been advanced at one bound to a place in the 
councils of aesthetic Europe. And, in sooth, is 
this hoping too high of my countrywomen ? True 
that, as the art seems always to have appealed to 
the ladies of Athens, and it was not until the 


122 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


waning time of the Republic that Roman ladies 
learned to love the practice of it, so Paris, Athe¬ 
nian in this as in all other things, has been noted 
hitherto as a far more vivid centre of the art than 
London. But it was in Rome, under the Em¬ 
perors, that unguentaria reached its zenith, and 
shall it not be in London, soon, that unguentaria 
shall outstrip its Roman perfection ! Surely there 
must be among us artists as cunning in the use 
of brush and puff as any who lived at Versailles. 
Surely the splendid, impalpable advance of good 
taste, as shown in dress and in the decoration of 
houses, may justify my hope of the preeminence 
of Englishwomen in the cosmetic art. By their 
innate delicacy of touch they will accomplish 
much, and much, of course, by their swift feminine 
perception. Yet it were well that they should 
know something also of the theoretical side of the 
craft. Modern authorities upon the mysteries of 
the toilet are, it is true, rather few; but among 
the ancients many a writer would seem to have 
been fascinated by them. Archigenes, a man of 
science at the Court of Cleopatra, and Criton, at 
the Court of the Emperor Trajan, both wrote 
treatises upon cosmetics—doubtless most scholarly 


123 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

treatises that would have given many a precious 
hint. It is a pity they are not extant. From 
Lucian or from Juvenal, with his bitter picture of a 
Roman levee, much may be learned ; from the staid 
pages of Xenophon and Aristophanes’s dear farces. 
But best of all is that fine book of the Ars Ama- 
toria that Ovid has set aside for the consideration 
of dyes, perfumes, and pomades. Written by an 
artist who knew the allurements of the toilet and 
understood its philosophy, it remains without ri¬ 
val as a treatise upon Artifice. It is more than 
a poem, it is a manual; and if there be left in 
England any lady who cannot read Latin in the 
original, she will do well to procure a discreet 
translation. In the Bodleian Library there is 
treasured the only known copy of a very poignant 
and delightful rendering of this one book of Ovid’s 
masterpiece. It was made by a certain Wye Wal- 
tonstall, who lived in the days of Elizabeth, and, 
seeing that he dedicated it to “the Vertuous 
Ladyes and Gentlewomen of Great Britain,” I am 
sure that the gallant writer, could he know of our 
great renaissance of cosmetics, would wish his little 
work to be placed once more within their reach. 
“Inafmuch as to you, ladyes and gentlewomen,” 


124 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

so he writes in his queer little dedication, “ my 
booke of pigments doth fir ft addreffe itfelf, that it 
may kiffe your hands and afterward have the lines 
thereof in reading fweetened by the odour of your 
breath, while the dead letters formed into words 
by your divided lips may receive new life by your 
paffionate expreffion, and the words marryed in that 
Ruby coloured temple may thus happily united, 
multiply your contentment. ” It is rather sad to 
think that, at this crisis in the history of pigments, 
the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen cannot 
read the libellus of Wye Waltonstall, who did so 
dearly love pigments. 

But since the days when these great critics wrote 
their treatises, with what gifts innumerable has 
Artifice been loaded by Science! Many little 
partitions must be added to the narthecium before 
it can comprehend all the new cosmetics that have 
been quietly devised since classical days, and will 
make the modern toilet chalks a way more splendid 
in its possibilities. A pity that no one has devoted 
himself to the compiling of a new list; but doubt¬ 
less all the newest devices are known to the ad¬ 
mirable unguentarians of Bond Street, who will 
impart them to their clients. Our thanks, too, 
125 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

should be given to Science for ridding us of the 
old danger that was latent in the use of cosmetics. 
Nowadays they cannot, being purged of any poi¬ 
sonous element, do harm to the skin that they 
make beautiful. There need be no more sowing 
the seeds of destruction in the furrows of time, 
no martyrs to the cause like Maria, Countess of 
Coventry, that fair dame but infelix, who died, so 
they relate, from the effect of a poisonous rouge 
upon her lips. No, we need have no fears now. 
Artifice will claim not another victim from among 
her worshippers. 

Loveliness shall sit at the toilet, watching her 
oval face in the oval mirror. Her smooth fingers 
shall flit among the paints and powder, to tip and 
mingle them, catch up a pencil, clasp a phial, and 
what not and what not, until the mask of vermeil 
tinct has been laid aptly, the enamel quite hard¬ 
ened. And, heavens, how she will charm us and 
ensorcel our eyes ! Positively rouge will rob us for 
a time of all our reason; we shall go mad over 
masks. Was it not at Capua that they had a whole 
street where nothing w r as sold but dyes and un¬ 
guents ? We must have such a street, and, to fill 
our new Seplasia, our Arcade of the Unguents, all 
126 


The Pervasion of Rouge 


herbs and minerals and live creatures shall give of 
their substance. The white cliffs of Albion shall 
be ground to powder for Loveliness, and perfumed 
by the ghost of many a little violet. The fluffy 
eider-ducks, that are swimming round the pond, 
shall lose their feathers that the powder-puff may 
be moonlike as it passes over Loveliness’s lovely 
face. Even the camels shall become ministers of 
delight, giving many tufts of their hair to be 
stained in her splendid color-box, and across her 
cheek the swift hare’s foot shall fly as of old. The 
sea shall offer her the phucus, its scarlet weed. 
We shall spill the blood of mulberries at her bid¬ 
ding. And, as in another period of great ecstasy, 
a dancing wanton, la belle Aubrey, was crowned 
upon a church’s lighted altar, so Arsenic, that 
“ greentress’d goddess,” ashamed at length of 
skulking between the soup of the unpopular and 
the test-tubes of the Queen’s analyst, shall be 
exalted to a place of consummate honor upon the 
toilet-table of Loveliness. 

All these things shall come to pass. Times of 
jolliness and glad indulgence! For Artifice, 
whom we drove forth, has returned among us, 
and, though her eyes are red with crying, she is 


127 


The Pervasion of Rouge 

smiling forgiveness. She is kind. Let us dance 
and be glad, and trip the cockawhoop ! Artifice, 
sweetest exile, is come into her kingdom. Let us 
dance her a welcome ! 

Oxford , i8q4. 


128 


Poor Romeo! 





Poor Romeo! 


Even now Bath glories in his legend, not idly, 
for he was the most fantastic animal that ever 
stepped upon her pavement. Were ever a statue 
given him, (and indeed he is worthy of a grotesque 
in marble,) it would be put in Pulteney Street or 
the Circus. I know that the palm trees of Antigua 
overshadowed his cradle, that there must be even 
now in Boulogne many who set eyes on him in the 
time of his less fatuous declension, that he died in 
London. But Mr. Coates, (for of that Romeo I 
write,) must be claimed by none of these places. 
Bath saw the laughable disaster of his debut , and 
so, in a manner, his whole life seems to belong to 
her, and the story of it to be a part of her annals. 

The Antiguan was already on the brink of mid¬ 
dle-age when he first trod the English shore. But, 
for all his thirty-seven years, he had the heart of a 
youth, and his purse being yet as heavy as his heart 


Poor Romeo! 


was light, the English sun seemed to shine glori¬ 
ously about his path and gild the letters of intro¬ 
duction that he scattered everywhere. Also, he 
was a gentleman of amiable, nearly elegant mien, 
and something of a scholar. His father had been 
the most respectable resident Antigua could show, 
so that little Robert, the future Romeo, had often 
sat at dessert with distinguished travellers through 
the Indies. But in the year 1807 old Mr. Coates 
had died. As we may read in Vol. lxxviii. of 
The Gentleman's Magazine , “ the Almighty, 
whom he alone feared, was pleased to take him 
from this life, after having sustained an untar¬ 
nished reputation for seventy-three years,” a pas¬ 
sage which, though objectionable in its theology, 
gives the true story of Romeo’s antecedents and 
disposes of the later calumnies that declared him 
the son of a tailor. Realizing that he was now an 
orphan, an orphan with not a few gray hairs, our 
hero had set sail in quest of amusing adventure. 

For three months he took the waters of Bath, 
unobtrusively, like other well-bred visitors. His 
attendance was solicited for all the most fashion¬ 
able routs and at assemblies he sat always in the 
shade of some titled turban. In fact, Mr. Coates 


132 


Poor Romeo! 


was a great success. There was an air of most ro¬ 
mantic mystery that endeared his presence to all 
the damsels fluttering fans in the Pump Room. It 
set them vying for his conduct through the mazes 
of the Quadrille or of the Triumph and blushing 
at the sound of his name. Alas ! their tremulous 
rivalry lasted not long. Soon they saw that Emma, 
sole daughter of Sir James Tylney Long, that 
wealthy baronet, had cast a magic net about the 
warm Antiguan heart. In the wake of her chair, 
by night and day, Mr. Coates was obsequious. 
When she cried that she would not drink the 
water without some delicacy to banish the iron 
taste, it was he who stood by with a box of vanilla- 
rusks. When he shaved his great moustachio it 
was at her caprice. And his devotion to Miss Em¬ 
ma was the more noted for that his own considera¬ 
ble riches were proof that it was true and single. 
He himself warned her, in some verses written for 
him by Euphemia Boswell, against the crew of 
penniless admirers who surrounded her : 

‘ 4 Lady , ah ! too bewitching lady ! now beware 
Of artful men that fain would thee ensnare , 

Not for thy merit, but thy fortune's sake. 

Give me your hand—your cash let venals take." 

133 


Poor Romeo! 


Miss Emma was his first love. To understand 
his subsequent behavior, let us remember that 
Cupid’s shaft pierces most poignantly the breast 
of middle-age. Not that Mr. Coates was laughed 
at in Bath for a love-a-lack-a-daisy. On the con¬ 
trary, his mien, his manner, were as yet so studi¬ 
ously correct, his speech so reticent, that laughter 
had been unusually inept. The only strange taste 
evinced by him was his devotion to theatricals. 
He would hold forth, by the hour, upon the fine 
conception of such parts as Macbeth, Othello and, 
especially, Romeo. Many ladies and gentlemen 
were privileged to hear him recite, in this or that 
drawing-room, after supper. All testified to the 
real fire with which he inflamed the lines of love 
or hatred. His voice, his gesture, his scholarship, 
were all approved. A fine symphony of praise 
assured Mr. Coates that no suitor worthier than he 
had ever courted Thespis. The lust for the foot¬ 
lights’ glare grew lurid in his mothish eye. What, 
after all, were these poor triumphs of the parlor ? 
It might be that contemptuous Emma, hearing the 
loud salvos of the gallery and boxes, would call 
him at length her lord. 

At this time there arrived at the York House 
i34 


Poor Romeo! 


Mr. Pryse Gordon, whose memoirs we know. Mr. 
Coates himself was staying at number ** Gay 
Street, but was in the habit of breakfasting daily 
at the York House, where he attracted Mr. Gor¬ 
don’s attention by “ rehearsing passages from 
Shakespeare, with a tone and gesture extremely 
striking both to the eye and the ear. ’ ’ Mr. Gor¬ 
don warmly complimented him and suggested that 
he should give a public exposition of his art. The 
cheeks of the amateur flushed with pleasure. “I 
am ready and willing,” he replied, “to play 
‘ Romeo ’ to a Bath audience, if the manager will 
get up the play and give me a good ‘ Juliet; ’ my 
costume is superb and adorned with diamonds, 
but I have not the advantage of knowing the 
manager, Dimonds.” Pleased by the stranger’s 
ready wit, Mr. Gordon scribbled a note of intro¬ 
duction to Dimonds there and then. So soon as 
he had “ discussed a brace of muffins and so many 
eggs,” the new Romeo started for the playhouse, 
and that very day bills were posted to the effect that 
“ a Gentleman of Fashion would make his first ap¬ 
pearance on February 9 in a role of Shakespeare.” 
All the lower boxes were immediately secured by 
Lady Belmore and other lights of Bath. “But- 
135 


Poor Romeo 1 


lers and Abigails,” it is said, “were commanded 
by their mistresses to take their stand in the cen¬ 
tre of the pit and give Mr. Coates a capital, hearty 
clapping.” Indeed, throughout the week that 
elapsed before the premiere , no pains were spared 
in assuring a great success. Miss Tilney Long 
showed some interest in the arrangements. Gos¬ 
sip spoke of her as a likely bride. 

The night came. Fashion, Virtue, and Intel¬ 
lect thronged the house. Nothing could have been 
more cordial than the temper of the gallery. All 
were eager to applaud the new Romeo. Presently, 
when the varlets of Verona had brawled, there 
stepped into the square—what !—a mountebank, 
a monstrosity. Hurrah died upon every lip. The 
house was thunderstruck. Whose legs were in 
those scarlet pantaloons? Whose face grinned 
over that bolster-cravat, and under that Charles 
II. wig and opera-hat? From whose shoulders 
hung that spangled sky-blue cloak ? Was this be¬ 
dizened scarecrow the Amateur of Fashion for 
sight of whom they had paid their shillings? At 
length a voice from the gallery cried, “ Good 
evening, Mr. Coates,” and, as the Antiguan—for 
he it was—bowed low, the theatre was filled with 
136 


Poor Romeo I 


yells of merriment. Only the people in the boxes 
were still silent, staring coldly at the protege who 
had played them so odious a prank. Lady Bel- 
more rose and called for her chariot. Her ex¬ 
ample was followed by several ladies of rank. 
The rest sat spellbound, and of their number was 
Miss Tilney Long, at whose rigid face many 
glasses were, of course, directed. Meanwhile the 
play proceeded. Those lines that were not 
drowned in laughter Mr. Coates spoke in the most 
foolish and extravagant manner. He cut little 
capers at odd moments. He laid his hand on his 
heart and bowed, now to this, now to that part of 
the house, always with a grin. In the balcony- 
scene he produced a snuff-box, and, after taking a 
pinch, offered it to the bewildered Juliet. Coming 
down to the footlights, he laid it on the cushion of 
the stage-box and begged the inmates to refresh 
themselves, and to “ pass the golden trifle on.” 
The performance, so obviously grotesque, was 
just the kind of thing to please the gods. The 
limp of Hephaestus could not have called laugh¬ 
ter so unquenchable from their lips. It is no 
trifle to set Englishmen laughing, but once you 
have done it, you can hardly stop them. Act 


i37 


Poor Romeo! 


after act of the beautiful love-play was performed 
without one sign of satiety from the seers of it. 
The laughter rather swelled in volume. Romeo 
died in so ludicrous a way that a cry of “ encore ” 
arose and the death was actually twice repeated. 
At the fall of the curtain there was prolonged 
applause. Mr. Coates came forward, and the 
good-humored public pelted him with fragments 
of the benches. One splinter struck his right 
temple, inflicting a scar, of which Mr. Coates was, 
in his old age, not a little proud. Such is the 
traditional account of this curious debut. Mr. 
Pryse Gordon, however, in his memoirs tells an¬ 
other tale. He professes to have seen nothing pe¬ 
culiar in Romeo’s dress, save its display of fine 
diamonds, and to have admired the whole inter¬ 
pretation. The attitude of the audience he at¬ 
tributes to a hostile cabal. John R. and Hunter 
H. Robinson, in their memoir of Romeo Coates, 
echo Mr. Pryse Gordon’s tale. They would have 
done well to weigh their authorities more accu¬ 
rately. 

I had often wondered at this discrepancy be¬ 
tween document and tradition. Last Spring, when 
I was in Bath for a few days, my mind brooded 
138 


Poor Romeo! 


especially on the question. Indeed, Bath, with her 
faded memories, her tristesse, drives one to reverie. 
Fashion no longer smiles from her windows nor 
dances in her sunshine, and in her deserted parks 
the invalids build up their constitutions. Now and 
again, as one of the frequent chairs glided past me, 
I wondered if its shadowy freight were the ghost 
of poor Romeo. I felt sure that the traditional 
account of his debut was mainly correct. How 
could it, indeed, be false ? Tradition is always a 
safer guide to truth than is the tale of one man. I 
might amuse myself here, in Bath, by verifying my 
notion of the debut or proving it false. 

One morning I was walking through a narrow 
street in the western quarter of Bath, and came to 
the window of a very little shop, which was full of 
dusty books, prints and engravings. I spied in one 
corner of it the discolored print of a queer, lean 
figure, posturing in a garden. In one hand this 
figure held a snuff-box, in the other an opera-hat. 
Its sharp features and wide grin, flanked by luxuri¬ 
ant whiskers, looked strange under a Caroline wig. 
Above it was a balcony and a lady in an attitude 
of surprise. Beneath it were these words, faintly 
lettered : Bombastes Coates wooing the Peerless 


i39 


Poor Romeo! 


Capulet, that's ’nough {that snuff) 1809. I cov¬ 
eted the print. I went into the shop. 

A very old man peered at me and asked my 
errand. I pointed to the print of Mr. Coates, 
which he gave me for a few shillings, chuckling 
at the pun upon the margin. 

“Ah,” he said, “ they’re forgetting him now, 
but he was a fine figure, a fine sort of figure.” 

“ You saw him ? ” 

“ No, no. I’m only seventy. But I’ve known 
those who saw him. My father had a pile of such 
prints.” 

“ Did your father see him? ” I asked, as the old 
man furled my treasure and tied it with a piece of 
tape. 

“ My father, sir, was a friend of Mr. Coates,” 
he said. “ He entertained him in Gay Street. Mr. 
Coates was my father’s lodger all the months he 
was in Bath. A good tenant, too. Never eccen¬ 
tric under my father’s roof—never eccentric.” 

I begged the old bookseller to tell me more of 
this matter. It seems that his father had been a 
citizen of some consequence, and had owned a 
house in modish Gay Street, where he let lodgings. 
Thither, by the advice of a friend, Mr. Coates had 


140 


Poor Romeo! 


gone so soon as he arrived in the town, and had 
stayed there down to the day after his debut , when 
he left for London. 

“My father often told me that Mr. Coates was 
crying bitterly when he settled the bill and got 
into his travelling-chaise. He’d come back from 
the play-house the night before as cheerful as could 
be. He’d said he didn’t mind what the public 
thought of his acting. But in the morning a let¬ 
ter was brought for him, and when he read it he 
seemed to go quite mad.” 

“I wonder what was in the letter ! ” I asked. 

‘ i Did your father never know who sent it ? ” 

“Ah,” my graybeard rejoined, “that’s the most 
curious thing. And it’s a secret. I can’t tell you. ’ ’ 

He was not as good as his word. I bribed him 
delicately with the purchase of more than one old 
book. Also, I think he was flattered by my eager 
curiosity to learn his long-pent secret. He told 
me that the letter was brought to the house by one 
of the footmen of Sir James Tilney Long, and that 
his father himself delivered it into the hands of 
Mr. Coates. 

“ When he had read it through, the poor gen¬ 
tleman tore it into many fragments, and stood 


Poor Romeo! 


staring before him, pale as a ghost. ‘ I must not 
stay another hour in Bath,’ he said. When he 
was gone, my father (God forgive him !) gathered 
up all the scraps of the letter, and for a long time 
he tried to piece them together. But there were 
a great many of them, and my father was not a 
scholar, though he was affluent.” / 

“ What became of the scraps ? ” I asked. “ Did 
your father keep them ? ’ ’ 

“ Yes, he did. And I used to try, when I was 
younger, to make out something from them. But 
even I never seemed to get near it. I’ve never 
thrown them away, though. They’re in a box.” 

I got them for a piece of gold that I could ill 
spare—some score or so of shreds of yellow paper 
traversed with pale ink. The joy of the archaeol¬ 
ogist with an unknown papyrus, of the detective 
with a clue, surged in me. Indeed, I was not 
sure whether I was engaged in private inquiry or 
in research ; so recent, so remote was the mystery. 
After two days’ labor, I marshalled the elusive 
words. This is the text of them : 

Mr. Coates, Sir, 

They say Revenge is sweet. I am fortunate to 
find it is so. I have compelled you to be far more a Fool 
142 


Poor Romeo 1 


than you made me at the fete-champetre of Lady B. & I, 
having accomplished my aim, am ready to forgive you now, 
as you implored me on the occasion of the fite. But pray 
build no Hope that I, forgiving you, will once more regard 
you as my Suitor. For that cannot ever be. I decided you 
should show yourself a Fool before many people. But such 
Folly does not commend your hand to mine. Therefore 
desist your irksome attention &, if need be, begone from 
Bath. I have punished you, & would save my eyes the 
trouble to turn away from your person. I pray that you 
regard this epistle as privileged and private. 

E. T. L. io of February. 

The letter lies before me as I write. It is writ¬ 
ten throughout in a firm and very delicate Italian 
hand. Under the neat initials is drawn, instead 
of the ordinary flourish, an arrow, and the ab¬ 
sence of any erasure in a letter of such moment 
suggests a calm, deliberate character and, probably, 
rough copies. I did not, at the time, suffer my 
fancy to linger over the tessellated document. I 
set to elucidating the reference to the fete-cham¬ 
petre. As I retraced my footsteps to the little 
book-shop, I wondered if I should find any excuse 
for the cruel faithlessness of Emma Tilney Long. 

The bookseller was greatly excited when I told 
him I had recreated the letter. He was very eager 


i43 


Poor Romeo! 


to see it. I did not pander to his curiosity. He 
even offered to buy the article back at cost price. 
I asked him if he had ever heard, in his youth, of 
any scene that had passed between Miss Tilney 
Long and Mr. Coates at some fete-champetre. The 
old man thought for some time, but he could not 
help me. Where then, I asked him, could I 
search old files of local newspapers ? He told me 
that there were supposed to be many such files 
mouldering in the archives of the Town Hall. 

I secured access, without difficulty, to these files. 
A whole day I spent in searching the copies issued 
by this and that journal during the months that 
Romeo was in Bath. In the yellow pages of these 
forgotten prints I came upon many complimentary 
allusions to Mr. Coates : “ The visitor welcomed 
(by all our aristocracy) from distant Ind,” “the 
ubiquitous,’’ “the charitable riche.” Of his 
“ forthcoming impersonation of Romeo and Juliet” 
there were constant puffs, quite in the modern 
manner. The accounts of his debut all showed 
that Mr. Pryse Gordon’s account of it was fabulous. 
In one paper there was a bitter attack on “Mr. 
Gordon, who was responsible for this insult to 
Thespian art, the gentry, and the people, for he 


144 


Poor Romeo! 


first arranged the whole production "—an extract 
which makes it clear that this gentleman had a 
good motive for his version of the affair. 

But I began to despair of ever learning what 
happened at the fete-champetre. There were ac¬ 
counts of “ a grand garden-party, whereto Lady 
Belper, on March the twenty-eighth, invited a host 
of fashionable persons. ’ * The names of Mr. Coates 
and of “ Sir James Tilney Long and his daugh¬ 
ter ’' were duly recorded in the lists. But that 
was all. I turned at length to a tiny file, consist¬ 
ing of five copies only, Bladud's Courier. There¬ 
in I found this paragraph, followed by some scur¬ 
rilities which I will not quote : 

“ Mr. C**t*s, who will act Romeo ( Wherefore art thou 
Romeo ?) this coming week for the pleasure of his fashion¬ 
able circle , incurred the contemptuous wrath of his Lady Fair 
at the Fete. It was a sad pity she entrusted him to hold 
her purse while she fed the gold-fishes. He was very proud 
of the honor till the gold fell from his hand among the gold¬ 
fishes. How appropriate was the misadventure ! But Miss 
Black Eyes, angry at her loss and her swain’s clumsiness, 
cried : ‘ Jump into the pond, sir, and find my purse in- 
stanter! ’ Several wags encouraged her, and the ladies were 
of the opinion that her adorer should certainly dive for the 
treasure. 4 Alas,’ the fellow said, 4 1 cannot swim, Miss. 

H5 


Poor Romeo! 


But tell me how many guineas you carried and I will make 
them good to yourself.’ There was a great deal of laughter 
at this encounter, and the haughty damsel turned on her heel, 
nor did she vouchsafe another word to her elderly lover.” 

“ When recreant man 
Meets lady’s wrath, &c., Ac.’’ 

So the story of the debut was complete ! Was 
ever a lady more inexorable, more ingenious, in 
her revenge ? One can fancy the poor Antiguan 
going to the Baronet’s house next day with a bou¬ 
quet of flowers and passionately abasing himself, 
craving her forgiveness. One can fancy the 
wounded vanity of the girl, her shame that people 
had mocked her for the disobedience of her suit¬ 
or. Revenge, as her letter shows, became her one 
thought. She would strike him through his other 
love, the love of Thespis. “I have compelled 
you,” she wrote afterwards, in her bitter triumph, 
“ to be a greater Fool than you made me.” She, 
then, it was that drove him to his public absurdity, 
she who insisted that he should never win her un¬ 
less he sacrificed his dear longing for stage-laurels 
and actually pilloried himself upon the stage. The 
wig, the pantaloons, the snuff-box, the grin, were 
all conceived, I fancy, in her pitiless spite. It is 
146 


Poor Romeo! 


possible that she did but say : ‘ ‘ The more ridicu¬ 
lous you make yourself, the more hope for you.” 
But I do not believe that Mr. Coates, a man of no 
humor, conceived the means himself. They were 
surely hers. 

It is terrible to think of the ambitious amateur 
in his bedroom, secretly practising hideous antics 
or gazing at his absurd apparel before a mirror. 
How loath must he have been to desecrate the lines 
he loved so dearly and had longed to declaim in 
all their beauty and their resonance ! And then, 
what irony at the daily rehearsal ! With how 
sad a smile must he have received the compliments 
of Mr. Dimonds on his fine performance, knowing 
how different it would all be “on the night!” 
Nothing could have steeled him to the ordeal but 
his great love. He must have wavered, had not 
the exaltation of his love protected him. But 
the jeers of the mob were music in his hearing, 
his wounds love-symbols. Then came the girl’s 
cruel contempt of his martyrdom. 

Aphrodite, who has care of lovers, did not spare 
Miss Tilney Long. She made her love, a few 
months after, one who married her for her fortune 
and broke her heart. In years of misery the way- 


147 


Poor Romeo! 


ward girl worked out the penance of her unpardon¬ 
able sin, dying, at length, in poverty and despair. 
Into the wounds of him who had so truly loved 
her was poured, after a space of fourteen years, the 
balsam of another love. On the 6th September 
1823, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, Mr. Coates 
was married to Miss Anne Robinson, who was a 
faithful and devoted wife to him till he died. 

Meanwhile, the rejected Romeo did not long 
repine. Two months after the tragedy at Bath, he 
was at Brighton, mingling with all the fashionable 
folk, and giving admirable recitations at routs. He 
was seen every day on the Parade, attired in an 
extravagant manner, very different to that he had 
adopted in Bath. A pale-blue surtout , tasselled 
Hessians, and a cocked hat were the most obvious 
items of his costume. He also affected a very curi¬ 
ous tumbril, shaped like a shell and richly gilded. 
In this he used to drive around, every afternoon, 
amid the gapes of the populace. It is evident 
that, once having tasted the fruit of notoriety, he 
was loath to fall back on simpler fare. He had 
become a prey to the love of absurd ostentation. 
A lively example of dandyism unrestrained by 
taste, he parodied in his person the foibles of Mr. 

148 


Poor Romeo! 


Brummell and the King. His diamonds and his 
equipage and other follies became the gossip of 
every newspaper in England. Nor did a day pass 
without the publication of some little rigmarole 
from his pen. Wherever there was a vacant thea¬ 
tre—were it in Cheltenham, Birmingham, or any 
other town—he would engage it for his produc¬ 
tions. One night he would play his favorite part, 
Romeo, with reverence and ability. The next, he 
would repeat his first travesty in all its hideous 
harlequinade. Indeed, there can be little doubt 
that Mr. Coates, with his vile performances, must 
be held responsible for the decline of dramatic art 
in England and the invasion of the amateur. The 
sight of such folly, strutting unabashed, spoilt the 
prestige of the theatre. To-day our stage is filled 
with tailors’ dummy heroes, with heroines who 
have real curls and can open and shut their eyes 
and, at a pinch, say “mamma” and “papa.” 
We must blame the Antiguan, I fear, for their ex¬ 
istence. It was he—the rascal—who first spread 
that scence sacra fames. Some say that he was a 
schemer and impostor, feigning eccentricity for his 
private ends. They are quite wrong ; Mr. Coates 
was a very good man. He never made a penny 


149 


Poor Romeo! 


out of his performances; he even lost many hun¬ 
dred pounds. Moreover, as his speeches before 
the curtain and his letters to the papers show, he 
took himself quite seriously. Only the insane take 
themselves quite seriously. 

It was the unkindness of his love that maddened 
him. But he lived to be the lightest-hearted of 
lunatics and caused great amusement for many 
years. Whether we think of him in his relation 
to history or psychology, dandiacal or dramatic 
art, he is a salient, pathetic figure. That he is 
memorable for his defects, not for his qualities, I 
know. But Romeo, in the tragedy of his wild love 
and frail intellect, in the folly that stretched the 
corners of his “ peculiar grin” and shone in his 
diamonds and was emblazoned upon his tumbril, is 
more suggestive than some sages. He was so fan¬ 
tastic an animal that Oblivion were indeed amiss. 
If no more, he was a great Fool. In any case, it 
would be fun to have seen him. 

London , i8g6. 


150 


Diminuendo 


\ 






Diminuendo 


In the year of grace 1890, and in the beautiful 
autumn of that year, I was a freshman at Oxford. 
I remember how my tutor asked me what lectures 
I wished to attend, and how he laughed when I 
said that I wished to attend the lectures of Mr. 
Walter Pater. Also I remember how, one morning 
soon after, I went into Ryman’s to order some 
foolish engraving for my room, and there saw, 
peering into a portfolio, a small, thick, rock-faced 
man, whose top-hat and gloves of bright dog-skin 
struck one of the many discords in that little city 
of learning or laughter. The serried bristles of 
his moustachio made for him a false-military air. 
I, think I nearly went down when they told me 
that this was Pater. 

Not that even in those more decadent days of 
my childhood did I admire the man as a stylist. 
Even then I was angry that he should treat Eng¬ 
lish as a dead language, bored by that sedulous 


iS 3 


Diminuendo 


ritual wherewith he laid out every sentence as in 
a shroud—hanging, like a widower, long over its 
marmoreal beauty or ever he could lay it at length 
in his book, its sepulchre. From that laden air, 
the so cadaverous murmur of that sanctuary, I 
would hook it at the beck of any jade. The writing 
of Pater had never, indeed, appealed to me, d\\’ 
atet, having regard to the couth solemnity of his 
mind, to his philosophy, his rare erudition, tlv a 
<f)U)Ta fxeyav Kal koXov iSey/xrjv. And I suppose it 
was when at length I saw him that I first knew 
him to be fallible. 

At school I had read Marius the Epicurean 
in bed and with a dark lantern. Indeed, I regarded 
it mainly as a tale of adventure, quite as fascinating 
as Midshipman Easy , and far less hard to under¬ 
stand, because there were no nautical terms in it. 
Marryat, moreover, never made me wish to run 
away to sea, whilst certainly Pater did make me 
wish for more “color” in the curriculum, for a 
renaissance of the Farrar period, when there was 
always “ a sullen spirit of revolt against the 
authorities ’ ’; when lockers were always being 
broken into and marks falsified, and small boys 
prevented from saying their prayers, insomuch 


i54 


Diminuendo 


that they vowed they would no longer buy brandy 
for their seniors. In some schools, I am told, the 
pretty old custom of roasting a fourth-form boy, 
whole, upon Founder’s Day still survives. But in 
my school there was less sentiment. I ended by 
acquiescing in the slow revolution of its wheel of 
work and play. I felt that at Oxford, when I 
should be of age to matriculate, a “variegated 
dramatic life ’ ’ was waiting for me. I was not a 
little too sanguine, alas ! 

How sad was my coming to the university ! 
Where were those sweet conditions I had pictured 
in my boyhood ? Those antique contrasts ? Did 
I ride, one sunset, through fens on a palfrey, watch¬ 
ing the gold reflections on Magdalen Tower ? Did 
I ride over Magdalen Bridge and hear the conso¬ 
nance of evening-bells and cries from the river be¬ 
low ? Did I rein in to wonder at the raised gates 
of Queen’s, the twisted pillars of St. Mary’s, the 
little shops, lighted with tapers ? Did bull-pups 
snarl at me, or dons, with bent backs, acknowl¬ 
edge my salute ? Any one who knows the place 
as it is, must see that such questions are purely 
rhetorical. To him I need not explain the disap¬ 
pointment that beset me when, after being whirled 


i55 


Diminuendo 


in a cab from the station to a big hotel, I wan¬ 
dered out into the streets. On aurait dit a bit 
of Manchester through which Apollo had once 
passed ; for here, among the hideous trams and 
the brand-new bricks—-here, glared at by the elec¬ 
tric-lights that hung from poles, screamed at by 
boys with the Echo and the Star —here, in a riot 
of vulgarity, were remnants of beauty, as I dis¬ 
cerned. There were only remnants. 

Soon also I found that the life of the place, like 
the place, had lost its charm and its tradition. 
Gone were the contrasts that made it wonderful. 
That feud between undergraduates and dons— 
latent, in the old days, only at times when it be¬ 
hoved the two academic grades to unite against the 
townspeople—was one of the absurdities of the 
past. The townspeople now looked just like un¬ 
dergraduates, and the dons just like townspeople. 
So splendid was the train-service between Oxford 
and London that, with hundreds of passengers 
daily, the one had become little better than a 
suburb of the other. What more could extension- 
ists demand ? As for me, I was disheartened. 
Bitter were the comparisons I drew between my 
coming to Oxford and the coming of Marius to 
156 


Diminuendo 


Rome. Could it be that there was at length no 
beautiful environment wherein a man might sound 
the harmonies of his soul ? Had civilization made 
beauty, besides adventure, so rare ? I wondered 
what counsel Pater, insistent always upon contact 
with comely things, would offer to one who could 
nowhere find them. I had been wondering that 
very day when I went into Ryman’s and saw him 
there. 

When the tumult of my disillusioning was past, 
my mind grew clearer. I discerned that the scope 
of my quest for emotion must be narrowed. That 
abandonment of one’s self to life, that merging of 
one’s soul in bright waters, so often suggested in 
Pater’s writing, were a counsel impossible for to¬ 
day. The quest of emotions must be no less 
keen, certainly, but the manner of it must be 
changed forthwith. To unswitch myself from my 
surroundings, to guard my soul from contact with 
the unlovely things that compassed it about, there¬ 
in lay my hope. I must approach the Benign 
Mother with great caution. And so, while most 
of the freshmen were doing her honor with wine 
and song and wreaths of smoke, I stood aside, 
pondered. In such seclusion I passed my first 
i57 


Diminuendo 


term — ah, how often did I wonder whether I 
was not wasting my days, and, wondering, aban¬ 
don my meditations upon the right ordering of 
the future! Thanks be to Athene, who threw 
her shadow over me in those moments of weak 
folly ! 

At the end of term I came to London. Around 
me seethed swirls, eddies, torrents, violent cross¬ 
currents of human activity. What uproar ! Surely 
I could have no part in modern life. Yet, yet 
for a while, it was fascinating to watch the ways 
of its children. The prodigious life of the Prince 
of Wales fascinated me above all; indeed, it still 
fascinates me. What experience has been with¬ 
held from His Royal Highness? Was ever so 
supernal a type, as he, of mere Pleasure ? How 
often he has watched, at Newmarket, the scud-a- 
run of quivering homuncules over the vert on 
horses, or, from some night-boat, the holocaust of 
great wharves by the side of the Thames; raced 
through the blue Solent; threaded les coulisses / 
He has danced in every palace of every capital, 
played in every club. He has hunted elephants 
through the jungles of India, boar through the 
forests of Austria, pigs over the plains of Massa- 
158 


Diminuendo 


chusetts. From the Castle of Abergeldie he has 
led his Princess into the frosty night, Highlanders 
lighting with torches the path to the deer-larder, 
where lay the wild things that had fallen to him 
on the crags. He has marched the Grenadiers to 
chapel through the white streets of Windsor. He 
has ridden through Moscow, in strange apparel, 
to kiss the catafalque of more than one Tzar. For 
him the Rajahs of India have spoiled their temples, 
and Blondin has crossed Niagara along the tight¬ 
rope, and the Giant Guard done drill beneath the 
chandeliers of the Neue Schloss. Incline he to 
scandal, lawyers are proud to whisper their secrets 
in his ear. Be he gallant, the ladies are at his 
feet. Ennuye , all the wits from Bernal Osborne 
to Arthur Roberts have jested for him. He has 
been “ present always at the focus where the 
greatest number of forces unite in their purest 
energy,” for it is his presence that makes those 
forces unite. 

“ Ennuye ?” I asked. Indeed he never is. 
How could he be when Pleasure hangs constantly 
upon his arm ! It is those others, overtaking her 
only after arduous chase, breathless and footsore, 
who quickly sicken of her company, and fall faint- 


159 


Diminuendo 


ing at her feet. And for me, shod neither with 
rank nor riches, what folly to join the chase ! I 
began to see how small a thing it were to sacrifice 
those external ‘ ‘ experiences, ’ * so dear to the heart 
of Pater, by a rigid, complex civilization made so 
hard to gain. They gave nothing but lassitude to 
those who had gained them through suffering. 
Even to the kings and princes, who so easily 
gained them, what did they yield besides them¬ 
selves ? I do not suppose that, if we were invited 
to give authenticated instances of intelligence on 
the part of our royal pets, we could fill half a col¬ 
umn of the Spectator. In fact, their lives are so 
full they have no time for thought, the highest 
energy of man. Now, it was to thought that my 
life should be dedicated. Action, apart from its 
absorption of time, would war otherwise against 
the pleasures of intellect, which, for me, meant 
mainly the pleasures of imagination. It is only 
(this is a platitude) the things one has not done, 
the faces or places one has not seen, or seen but 
darkly, that have charm. It is only mystery— 
such mystery as besets the eyes of children—that 
makes things superb. I thought of the voluptu¬ 
aries I had known—they seemed so sad, so ascetic 
160 


Diminuendo 


almost, like poor pilgrims, raising their eyes never 
or ever gazing at the moon of tarnished endeavor. 
I thought of the round, insouciant faces of the 
monks at whose monastery I once broke bread, 
and how their eyes sparkled when they asked me 
of the France that lay around their walls. I 
thought, par die, of the lurid verses written by 
young men who, in real life, know no haunt more 
lurid than a literary public-house. It was, for me, 
merely a problem how I could best avoid “sensa¬ 
tions,” “pulsations,” and “ exquisite moments ” 
that were not purely intellectual. I would not at¬ 
tempt to combine both kinds, as Pater seemed to 
fancy a man might. I would make myself master 
of some small area of physical life, a life of quiet, 
monotonous simplicity, exempt from all outer dis¬ 
turbance. I would shield my body from the 
world that my mind might range over it, not hurt 
nor fettered. As yet, however, I was in my first 
year at Oxford. There were many reasons that I 
should stay there and take my degree, reasons that 
I did not combat. Indeed, I was content to wait 
for my life. 

And now that I have made my adieux to the Be¬ 
nign Mother, I need wait no longer. I have been 
161 


Diminuendo 


casting my eye over the suburbs of London. I 

have taken a most pleasant little villa in-ham, 

and here I shall make my home. Here there 
is no traffic, no harvest. Those of the inhab¬ 
itants who do anything go away each morning 
and do it elsewhere. Here no vital forces unite. 
Nothing happens here. The days and the months 
will pass by me, bringing their sure recurrence of 
quiet events. In the spring-time I shall look out 
from my window and see the laburnum flowering 
in the little front garden. In summer cool syrups 
will come for me from the grocer’s shop. Autumn 
will make the boughs of my mountain-ash scarlet, 
and, later, the asbestos in my grate will put forth 
its blossoms of flame. The infrequent cart of 
Buzzard or Mudie will pass my window at all 
seasons. Nor will this be all. I shall have 
friends. Next door, there is a retired military 
man who has offered, in a most neighborly way, 
to lend me his copy of the Tunes. On the other 
side of my house lives a charming family, who 
perhaps will call on me, now and again. I have 
seen them sally forth, at sundown, to catch the 
theatre-train; among them walked a young lady, 
the charm of whose figure was ill concealed by the 
162 



Diminuendo 


neat water-proof that overspread her evening dress. 
Some day it may be . but I anticipate. 

These things will be but the cosy accompaniment 
of my days. For I shall contemplate the world. 

I shall look forth from my window, the labur¬ 
num and the mountain-ash becoming mere sil¬ 
houettes in the foreground of my vision. I shall 
look forth and, in my remoteness, appreciate the 
distant pageant of the world. Humanity will 
range itself in the columns of my morning paper. 
No pulse of life will escape me. The strife of 
politics, the intriguing of courts, the wreck of 
great vessels, wars, dramas, earthquakes, national 
griefs or joys; the strange sequels to divorces, 
even, and the mysterious suicides of land-agents 
at Ipswich — in all such phenomena I shall 
steep my exhaurient mind. Delicias quoque 
bibliotheca experiar. Tragedy, comedy, chivalry, 
philosophy will be mine. I shall listen to their 
music perpetually and their colors will dance be¬ 
fore my eyes. I shall soar from terraces of stone 
upon dragons with shining wings and make war 
upon Olympus. From the peaks of hills I shall 
swoop into recondite valleys and drive the pig¬ 
mies, shrieking little curses, to their caverns. It 
163 


Diminuendo 


may be my whim to wander through infinite parks 
where the deer lie under the clustering shadow of 
their antlers and flee lightly over the grass; to 
whisper with white prophets under the elms or 
bind a child with a daisy-chain or, with a lady, 
thread my way through the acacias. I shall swim 
down rivers into the sea and outstrip all ships. 
Unhindered I shall penetrate all sanctuaries and 
snatch the secrets of every dim confessional. 

Yes! among books that charm, and give wings 
to the mind, will my days be spent. I shall be 
ever absorbing the things great men have written; 
with such experience I will charge my mind to the 
full. Nor will I try to give anything in return. 
Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the recluse, 
would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yel¬ 
low quarterly . . . and had that succes de fiasco 
which is always given to a young writer of talent. 
But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. 
Only Art with a capital H gives any consolations 
to her henchmen. And I, who crave no knight¬ 
hood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. 
Already I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. 
I belong to the Beardsley period. Younger men, 
with months of activity before them, with fresher 
164 


Diminuendo 


schemes and notions, with newer enthusiasm, have 
pressed forward since then. Cedo junioribus. In¬ 
deed, I stand aside with no regret. For to be 
outmoded is to be a classic, if one has written well. 
I have acceded to the hierarchy of good scribes 
and rather like my niche. 

Chicago , i8gg. 


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